On the afternoon of Thursday 11 July shoppers were shocked as a vehicle went up in flames in the Westgate Shopping Centre parking lot.
At Entrance 4 of the centre at around 2.30pm, a woman (42) was warned by a taxi driver that her petrol tank was on fire.
The woman allegedly cursed at the taxi driver and resisted getting out of the vehicle when he opened the door to pull her out. The taxi driver, however, persisted and got the woman out of the vehicle, according to eyewitness Laurence Rapule, who assisted the taxi driver to get the woman away from the vehicle.
“I think she was trying to commit suicide,” Rapule told the Record.
By then, she already had sustained injuries and Rapule left the scene to disinfect his hands as ER24 paramedics arrived on scene.
According to ER24 spokesperson Werner Vermaak, who was on scene after the accident, the woman sustained full-body burns and was rushed to Leratong Hospital in Kagiso.
“We arrived to find the woman on her back in the parking lot. One tyre of the burning vehicle burst while we were examining her, so we immediately had to move her to the ambulance.
“She remains in a critical condition.”
Vermaak says that for some reason the helicopter that was called out to airlift the woman from the scene was declined.
“This is the third time that provincial government has declined a helicopter call-out in this area,” Vermaak told the Record, referring to previous cases where a biker (16) was not airlifted from an accident scene on Christiaan de Wet Road, and a man that sustained critical burn injuries on his farm in Randfontein also was refused being airlifted.
