A DURBAN North resident whose bag containing years of work and expensive equipment was stolen in a suspected remote-jamming incident has praised Durban North SAPS after officers recovered the items just hours later.

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Steph Holpert discovered the bag missing last Thursday (March 12) after returning home following school pick-up and several stops during the day.

“I went to open my boot to take the bags out and when I went back for my work bag it was gone,” Holpert said.

“I checked the entire car and couldn’t find it. I even said to my daughter that the bag was gone. It was such a shock.”

Inside the bag was high-value equipment and an external hard drive containing nearly a decade of freelance work.

“While the equipment was insured, the value of the external hard drive with nine years of my work on it is something insurance could never replace,” she said.

Holpert retraced her steps and used a device-tracking application which showed the last known location of the equipment in central Durban before it went offline. By examining street-view images of the area, she noticed an electronics buy-and-sell shop nearby and shared the information with police when she opened a theft case at the Durban North police station.

She said she initially feared the items were gone for good.

“I honestly thought everything was lost,” she said.

Officers were then dispatched to the location Holpert had identified.

A few hours later, she received a call from Constable Sabelo Bukhosini asking her to identify her belongings via WhatsApp.

“I couldn’t believe it when they told me they had found them. I was blown away. Constable Bukhosini reassured me that nothing was damaged and that everything had been recovered.”

Holpert later collected the equipment from police and expressed gratitude to the officers involved, including Constables Bukhosini, Sanele Mkhize, Carlito Anandham of the Rapid Response Team and Sandile Ndlovu, as well as private security company Marshall Security, which assisted by reviewing camera footage.

Reflecting on the ordeal, Holpert said the experience highlighted how sophisticated remote-jamming theft has become.

“When I later saw the footage, the car lights didn’t flash when I locked it. That’s when we realised the signal had been jammed,” she said. “Out of all the places I stopped that day, it happened in the area where I felt the safest.”

Despite the frightening experience, Holpert said the quick response from police turned the situation into a rare positive outcome.

“It’s not every day something like this ends with good news,” she said. “The team who helped me had the resources and the willingness to act when all hope felt lost. I’m incredibly grateful.”

Durban North SAPS police spokesperson, Nonhlanhla Shozi, said officers will do their best in assisting the public.

“We’re here to help our community in any way that we can. We are pleased that the outcome of this case was a positive one. Well done to everyone involved in recovering the resident’s belongings,” she said.

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