AN elderly Scottburgh man was hijacked in his very own garage on Monday afternoon.
This after two hooded gunmen had apparently stalked him and his wife for hours, all the way from a shopping mall in Amanzimtoti.
“Thank God my wife wasn’t with me when they finally pounced,” the traumatised man (who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals) told the Mid South Coast Mail yesterday.
He and his wife had visited the Galleria shopping mall earlier in the day to shop and exchange R3 000 for coins for their business.
“I just had this uneasy feeling, so we decided to put all the change in our grocery bags,” he said.
When they got back to Scottburgh, his wife went for a facial and he had a beer at a nearby restaurant. She decided to walk home and he drove back shortly afterwards.
He had just parked the car when a gun was put to his head.
He looked up to see two balaclava-clad men, both armed.
“I didn’t look them in the eyes, because I believe that is what you’re supposed to avoid in these situations,” he said.
He handed over his watch, chain, rings, cellphone and wallet.
Then one of the gunmen opened the boot and asked where the money was.
The two had obviously followed them from Galleria and patiently waited while they shopped, stopped off for a beer and drove home hours later. The men even knew where they had placed the bags containing the change.
In a somewhat comical twist to an otherwise nasty situation, the robbers battled to unlock the car’s steering wheel.
They had to ask their victim for help.
After reversing out, they also battled to close the garage and had to appeal to their victim again to close the door on himself.
Meanwhile, a neighbour who witness the scene from his balcony, phoned the police and freed the man from the garage.
A Westville resident phoned the next day to report that his empty wallet and car had been found found abandoned in Galway Street. The keys were still in the ignition.
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