A group of schoolchildren watched a hijacking unfold in front of their eyes in Durban on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The hijacking<\/a> took place outside SRS Primary School in Overport while a man was dropping off his children there in the morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to information received, armed hijackers arrived in a silver Renault Triber. The men approached the Audi, threatened the driver with a firearm<\/a> and ordered him out of his car before taking the vehicle. Zain Soosiwala, from Secure SA private security company, said the hijacked Audi was subsequently tracked to KwaMashu, north of Durban.<\/p>\n “The vehicle was found with the interior stripped and damaged,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n A CCTV camera outside the school premises captured the hijacking.<\/a> In the footage a group of men alight from a car parked alongside the Audi. One heads to the Audi driver’s window. He is seen reaching into the car through the window while his accomplice walks to the passenger side, opens the back door, and pulls out two children from the back seat.<\/p>\n The family in the car is suddenly overwhelmed by robbers now standing at all the doors.\u00a0<\/p>\n A minibus taxi arrives and parks alongside, offloading school children oblivious to what is happening next to them. Other children stand at the school entrance looking on as the robbers<\/a> harass the Audi driver.<\/p>\n One of the men holds the driver against a wall while the others try to start the car. One hijacker and the car owner walk back and forth to the driver’s window. It is unclear what the conversation is about. The suspects appear to want the owner to help them start the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n Police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Magwaza said a case of carjacking was opened at Mayville SAPS.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe victim had parked his vehicle outside a school on West Road when suspects accosted him and robbed him of his vehicle and cellphones,\u201d Magwaza said<\/p>\n Hijacking syndicate dismantled<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a crime intelligence-driven police operation targeting an alleged hijacking syndicate ended in a shootout and the arrest of 17 people in Orange Farm on Tuesday morning after police acted on information about a planned truck hijacking along the N1.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a separate incident, three Western Cape Social Development employees were targeted in hijackings and attempted hijackings in Khayelitsha in the space of a week, with one shot at during the latest incident on Monday.<\/p>\n The employee, a policy developer in the department\u2019s Child Protection programme, was conducting a monitoring visit to an NPO when she was targeted in an attempted hijacking. <\/p>\n In Gauteng, police have arrested a 47-year-old man after a high-speed chase linked to the hijacking of an Omoda and the kidnapping of two people in Centurion. The incident occurred on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Police: hijacks decreasing<\/p>\n