Mr Dumisani Nkambule, a 35-year-old truck driver, was hijacked and kidnapped last week after he was ambushed by robbers on the Old Middleburg road. “I was driving past the garage near Jackaroo Park, and as I got to the stop street a car stopped in front of me and three guys got out…” Nkambule explained. He faintly recalled the suspects’ vehicle as being ‘silver-grey’ in colour, but the sight of firearms in the hands of these unknown men drove all other thoughts from his mind.
In an instant, the suspects where upon Nkambule. Getting into the truck they ordered Nkambule to move into the back and lay down, where two of the men tied him up with cable ties.
They proceeded to drive off, further towards Middleburg with Nkambule in the back of the truck.
Before reaching Middleburg, the suspects turned off next to the road, where they allegedly dragged Nkambule off into a bush. Two suspects hid there with Nkambule as the third left with the truck. “Then after a while a car came to pick up one of the men,” Nkambule told. He was left with only the one armed suspect along with a bag, blanket and jersey he kept in the truck. The only personal item Nkambule was not allowed to keep was his cell phone, which was taken away with the stolen truck.
The remaining suspect forced Nkambule down on his blanket and told him to sleep. “I could not sleep,” Nkambule said as he remembers shivering on the ground with cold and fear. The suspect allegedly told Nkambule that he was to stay with him until morning.
Hidden in the bush, in the dead of night, Nkambule could do nothing else but wait quietly.
“It was an hour, maybe two hours that I waited…” Nkambule recalls. “Then I saw the lights of a car pulling off the nearby road.”
The armed suspect clearly did not expect another vehicle and ran away from the scene.
Nkambule’s timely rescuers, in the vehicle parked near the bushes, had switched off the engine and Nkambule was left in complete darkness again.
As he was afraid to call for help because Nkambule thought his kidnapper might still be close by, he started shifting and crawling towards the road. He moved with difficulty on his elbows and knees as he was still tightly bound by the cable ties. Crawling and rolling towards where he saw the vehicles headlights he made his way out of the bush.
The vehicle that he found near the road belonged to a security company.
The relieved Nkambule crawled all the way to the security bakkie where he alerted the security guards of his presence.
Nkambule was taken to the police station where he reported the stolen truck. A few days later the truck was recovered near Bronkhorstspruit.
A case of hijacking and kidnapping is being investigated.
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