A primary school teacher was arrested on Tuesday, last week, nearly two weeks after she had threatened “to shoot” a pushy hawker with her plastic cap gun (“clap gun”).
The incident occurred on May 5, at the intersection at McDonald’s Norkem Park.
The Terenure mother, who prefers to remain anonymous, is now in the process of opening a civil case against the Norkem Park SAPS, for arrest under false pretences. She was in police custody for about six hours.
“The police showed up at my school, saying I must go to the station to give a statement about the incident. They said it would only take 20 minutes, but when I got there they arrested me for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm,” she said.
After pleas made by her attorney, the case was not put on the court role until further investigations had been done.
“I keep my clap gun, taser and pepper spray in the car under my seat for self-defence, because I drive alone a lot,” the woman said.
She told the EXPRESS that the hawker would not take no for an answer and that he kept on putting the avocados he was selling through her window.
“He almost climbed into my car – his whole upper body was inside. I asked him numerous times to get away from my car but he kept on insisting on selling me the avos,” she said.
“I then took out my taser and showed it to him. He made racial comments towards me so I got out my clap gun from under my seat and showed that to him in the hope he would back off.
”He just kept on screaming, ‘Shoot me, shoot me!’ and I drove off.”
She believes the hawker took a photograph of her car and registration number and took that to the police to open a case.
