FIRST she heard a loud banging on her car window. The next moment she heard people shouting, “Give me your cellphone!”
Then, within 37 seconds, Nadia Jamaloodeen’s car was gone.
The 25-year-old’s traumatic experience of a hijacking in Edenvale on September 13 last year was captured on CCTV footage.
The incident happened just after 5.30am outside a complex where she was fetching a colleague with whom she travelled to work with in Sandton.
The Van Riebeeck Park resident recalled the fateful day she was hijacked by three armed men while waiting in the driveway of the complex.
As she’s waiting, the video shows two men running towards the driver’s side of the car, a white Ford Figo.
“The two men came banging on my window. The one had a gun in his hand and the other a knife. They were shouting, ‘Give me your cellphone’, while the gun was pointed directly at my face,” Jamaloodeen explained.
At first she thought they just wanted her cellphone and handbag. But then they somehow managed to force her door open, even though it was locked at the time.
The car then reverses a little, as if she is trying to get away.
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“I did not try reversing my car,” she clarifies. “It just rolled back because the handbrake was down and the force of trying to get me out of the car moved it.”
“I could not attempt to get away as I was too afraid they would kill me.”
A third man then joins the party, walks up to the other side of the car and gets in at the back. At the same time Jamaloodeen is forced to get out of the car.
“After getting out of my car, I wanted to shout as I saw my colleague approaching, but I did not as one of the guys said he would kill me if I did.”
She then goes to the back of the car and opens the door to get her cellphone and handbag, as that’s what they had asked for and she assumed that’s all they wanted. “I did not once think they were going to take my car.”
But they did, and in less than a minute they were gone with her car.
Shortly after the hijackers take off, Jamaloodeen can be seen walking around, confused and clearly shaken from what had just happened.
Security then appears, with her colleague following behind.
Her colleague took the distressed Jamaloodeen to her apartment to call her boyfriend and the police, who Jamaloodeen says arrived over an hour after they had called.
A case was opened with Edenvale SAPS but unfortunately the car was never recovered.
Jamaloodeen has since gone for counselling and says she is okay, although she still gets scared when driving at night and when she is at a traffic light intersection.
Watch the video at www.kemptonexpress.co.za
