Five cases of armed robbery were reported at Witbank Police Station, two of which occurred downtown in the Central Business District.
Mr Phillip Vermaak received a R2 000 fine for allegedly not stopping at a stop street, his court date was for February 25. He went out to Witbank Magistrate’s Court to appeal the fine.}
When he arrived he first checked his e-mails before getting out of his car, at the time a man opened his passenger door.
“I looked at him and asked him what he was doing, he just laughed as another opened the right hand door and told me, ‘this is not the North West, this is Witbank you $%#^,” said Vermaak.
The suspect drew a knife and pressed it against Vermaak, demanding he hand over his cellular phone. He tried negotiating with them, offering them money instead of the phone, they refused and snatched the phone and ran off towards the taxi rank.
“I gave chase, when one of them shouted that I must not follow them, they would kill me. So I turned around and headed back to my car,” ended Vermaak.
A similar incident occurred on February 27 when Mr Phillip Degenaar went downtown to the CBD to pick up some car spares.
“It happened so quickly, I got into my bakkie and closed the door, as I did all four doors opened and four men surrounded my car,” said Degenaar.
One of the four suspects drew a gun and held it at Degenaar, the other three suspects started frisking him for money. They also stole his laptop and a diagnostics machine, Vebis V2 which is used to search for fault codes on vehicles.
“They just ran off out of sight. The diagnostics machine is valued at around R40 000,” he said.
In other cases a man was robbed of his cell phone while visiting the men’s room in the CBD on February 28.
The previous day a man was robbed of his cellular phone while walking in Reyno Ridge, he was held at knifepoint.
