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Durban – A police stake-out on the rooftop parking at the Pavilion shopping mall in Westville saw a hijacker cornered and arrested this week after he was chased by policemen and shoppers as he tried to escape in a stolen bakkie. <\/p>\n
Police spokesman Thulani Zwane confirmed that the 32-year-old man appeared in the Pinetown Magistrate\u2019s Court on Tuesday. He was charged with possession of an unlicensed gun and car theft. His three accomplices escaped. <\/p>\n
The drama started just after dark on Monday when shopper Stella Stewart was waiting to be fetched by her husband, James. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was about to give the car guard money when I saw a group of armed men chasing a bakkie that drove past me at speed,\u201d she said. \u201cI dived to the ground and covered my head.\u201d <\/p>\n
The car guard, she said, was just as stunned and also hit the deck. <\/p>\n
A police source said the bakkie had been parked by the thieves after it had been hijacked in Pinetown at 1.30pm on Monday. It had been left to \u201ccool off\u201d, which thieves did to see if a tracking device would alert authorities. <\/p>\n
The security company Tracker found the bakkie and tipped off police, who lay-in-wait for the hijackers to collect their booty. <\/p>\n
\u201cPolicemen were dressed in civilian clothes and drove unmarked cars,\u201d a police source said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
After a wait of several hours, the police\u2019s patience was rewarded when they saw a man approach the bakkie. He climbed in and tried to drive off when he saw the police, but he did not get very far as there was a queue to get out of the parking. The police moved quickly, circling the bakkie, and arrested the man. <\/p>\n
He was found in possession of an unlicensed gun. <\/p>\n
Apparently, the man had been picked up on the mall\u2019s CCTV arriving in the rooftop parking in a red car with three other men. He had climbed out with another man and approached the bakkie to drive it off. During the chase the man\u2019s accomplice escaped while the men waiting in their getaway car disappeared. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Stewart said the police\u2019s work was \u201cexcellent\u201d, especially as no one was hurt. <\/p>\n
Tracker spokesman Gareth Crooker said it was \u201ccommon\u201d for thieves to leave stolen vehicles at shopping malls or other public venues while they waited to see if a tracker was installed. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Crooker said Tracker had worked with the police on a \u201cvariety of operations that had led to numerous arrests\u201d. The police did not get enough credit for solving cases that involved \u201chighly sophisticated crime syndicates\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Durban – A police stake-out on the rooftop parking at the Pavilion shopping mall in Westville saw a hijacker cornered and arrested this week after he was chased by policemen and shoppers as he tried to escape in a stolen bakkie. Police spokesman Thulani Zwane confirmed that the 32-year-old man appeared in the Pinetown Magistrate\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-19914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}