03 February 2010
On my way home from work today I was almost mugged by a smash and grabber. It happened at approximately 5:50pm at the intersection of Eloff and Faraday Street just before the onramp heading east towards Germiston. I was listening to Redi Direkos podcast from the previous day where she interviewed Professor Tim Noakes about the pressures of supplements in school sport, I had been trying to listen to it for two days but was always being interupted, the day that I tried to download it, telkom had a break in their international bandwidth line that disrupted the internet all over south africa which subsequently led me to using my omnia phone to download it, which incidentally cost me R20. Five minutes after downloading it, the internet at work was back online, I felt very cheated and hoped that Mpho could buy me a chicken schwarma to make up for my loss, Unfortunately it never happened, I did however score a free Business Day newspaper after work on my way back to the parking lot worth R10-20, which somewhat comforted me.
At the intersection of Eloff and Faraday right next to the Faraday Taxi Rank and Muti Market I noticed a suspicious looking black man smoking a cigarette dressed in a brown top and blue jeans wearing a brown cap who approached the red tazz in front of me from the drivers side and walked really close to the vehicle as if he intended to jump into it, there were four people in the vehicle in front of me.
My window was half opened as im not such a big fan of the airconditioning, the suspicious man accosted my vehicle but instead of walking directly to the half opened window he made his presence more suspicious by walking around the vehicle extremly close as if he had grevious intent. Looking at him now in my rear view mirror I realised his intention as he didnt continue walking down the road and his body language suggested he was about to do something violent. I started rolling up the electric window but he interuppted the window from going completly up with both his hands, the window at this point stalled and he said to me still holding his half smoked cigarette in his left hand, "i can see the cellphone on the seat, give it to me, i dont want to kill you over a cellphone!" i said no, he reached into his pocket at which point the window continued to go up all the way to the top, he mimiced the movement of pulling out a gun and gestured a gun with his index and thumb, at that time I had already calculated the probability of being shot and premempted his next move by swinging my steering wheel 90 degrees into him and over the lane on my right hand side.
He panicked and tried running away in front of my vehicle, my front wheel drove over one of his feet and then I hit him with a double crunch special with my back wheel. He screamed in hororr and as I drove away in a state of shock I looked into my rear view mirror and saw him slouched on his knees in the middle of the road. As I approached the onramp to the m2 heading east, I slowed down to try to get a better look at the would be smash and grabber but it seemed that he had quickly removed himself from the scene and out of harms way.
In retrospect, at the moment he reached into his pocket, I asked myself, is the end? it was a frightful experience one I hope to never experience again, unfortunately I have no control over it ever happening again, all i can do is take precautionary measure and hope for the best. "U" told me to call the police and inform them or to call crime line which i intend doing to make other people aware that, that intersection is a smash and grab hotspot.
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