An Emerald Street resident was taken on a hell-ride, when he was brutally assaulted by unknown assailants after being hijacked last Saturday night (May 26).
Dinesh Perumal (21), was returning home on the R101 (Old Johannesburg Road) after visiting friends in Centurion, when he was hijacked.
According to Dinesh, he had stopped at a traffic light at around 9pm, before turning onto Ruimte Road headed towards Laudium when, out of nowhere, two armed thugs appeared at either side of his blue Golf and demanded that he open the door.
A still visibly distraught Dinesh recounted the shocking events to the Laudium Sun. "It all happened so fast. At first, I didn't even intend to stop at the robot, since I had heard how dangerous the place was at night, but there was a car opposite that was about to turn so I had to wait. I could never have imagined what would happen next. There were these two creeps next to my car, pointing their guns and screaming at me to get out. I panicked and I don’t know why, but I unlocked my door and immediately one hoodlum jumped into the back seat and the other climbed in front with me. They yelled at me to continue driving and, while I was driving, I kept telling them to take whatever they wanted, but they just kept silent, signaling with their hands the direction I was to drive in. I drove straight into Sunnyside and saw that I was approaching a dark street with no streetlights," Dinesh recalled.
The hysterical Laudium resident said he realised this was a do-or-die moment. "If I went down that dark street, I believed that these thugs could do anything to me. They could kill me down there and no one would hear or see anything. I wasn't about to let that happen and said to myself, either I do something now, or be killed," recounted Dinesh, wiping a few drops of sweat from his brow.
"I dropped right down to the lowest gear and pushed my clutch in, thinking I could slow down and jump out, but when I did this, the criminal in the back saw and started viciously beating me over the head with his gun. His buddy then grabbed the steering wheel, but the idiot drove the car straight into a curb."
Dinesh said he wanted to climb out of the car and make a run for it, but the hijackers were too fast for him. They stopped him before he could even get out of the car, he said. "They started pushing and shoving me around, hitting me, demanding cash and my cell phone. I begged them to take my phone, and the little bit of change I had on me. I told them to take it all and just leave me alone. I think God was listening to my prayers, because after they took my phone and change, the two thugs fled.”
The shaken victim said he tried to start his car and drive away, but it had been damaged when the thug slammed into the curb.
"Finally, I got it to start, but the front tyres were damaged. I forced my car into gear and managed to drive to a nearby restaurant. All the way there, I could hear my rim scraping along the road," Dinesh recalled, adding that at the restaurant, he called his cousin and, after what had seemed like forever, breathed a deep sigh of relief when his cousin arrived.
"There is no place in this country where we can say we are safe, because we are not. Not in our homes, not in our yards, not at the supermarket, not even in our own cars, nowhere," Dinesh concluded.
A distressed Dinesh Perumal said, there is no safe place in this country.
The Ruimte/Old JHB Road intersection, where Emerald Street resident Dinesh was accosted.