While attempting to help, Mandla Mdakane fell prey to three homeless men on Monday night.
Mdakane is a security officer at Kempton Park Civic Centre and was driving along Pretoria Road when he stopped to assist at an accident scene on the corner of Pretoria Road and Long Street.
“A taxi had crashed into a spares shop and it appeared the taxi driver wanted to reverse and take off,” said Mdakane’s colleague, Joas Ntloedibe.
“Mdakane was trying to stop the taxi driver and left his car to attend to the scene when three homeless men approached his car and stole his tablet that was on the passenger seat.
“The men took the tablet and left.”
Mdakane was puzzled to return to his car only to find his tablet missing. Helping him to piece together the puzzle was another homeless man who told him what had happened to his tablet.
“Mdakane was approached by a witness who told him that his tablet was sold at the nearby taxi rank,” said a friend and site supervisor at a security company, Velly Motsweni.
“This man also told Mdakane he knows the three men. The homeless man described the men and Mdakane searched for them until he found them at 3am sleeping on West Street. He woke them up and asked them about the tablet.”
The men didn’t deny what had happened and confessed everything.
“Mdakane told me one of the men still had the SIM card on him,” said Motsweni. “They told him the name of the taxi driver they sold the tablet to.”
Mdakane went to the taxi rank where he was given the registration number and contact details of the taxi driver who had bought the tablet for R250.
According to Ntloedibe, the taxi driver gave the three men R200 and was meant to give the remaining R50 the following day.
“Mdakane called the taxi driver the following morning explaining the story to him and asking that he return his tablet,” said Ntloedibe.
“He then asked Motsweni and me to accompany him to a nearby petrol station to collect the tablet. We went with the three men to identify the taxi driver and he gave back the tablet.
“Mdakane didn’t want to open a case because he was just relieved that he found and got back his tablet.”
Ntloedibe and Motsweni want this experience to be an eye-opener to the community and metro employees.
“It was easy for the men to search Mdakane’s car because one of them was wearing a red jacket with a metro emblem on it,” said Motsweni.
“People might not have questioned them due to that jacket and thought they worked together. We urge everyone, especially metro workers, to be on high alert as it is an on-going trend where people use these clothing items to gain access to metro buildings and steal.”
Ntloedibe added: “I agree with Motsweni. There was an incident where a woman, who was also wearing one of the metro jackets, went into the building to make copies of certain documents. It was later discovered cartridges were missing and nobody knew who the woman was.”
