Pretoria - Tshwane Youth Business Council chairman, Tumisang Masemola, is lucky to be alive after being hijacked, abducted and shot.
Masemola, who is recovering at home, spent almost an hour with his abductors trying to escape and find his way to safety.
The harrowing ordeal took place last Friday just as Masemola, 34, arrived at his mother’s Akasia home.
He said he was joining his fiancée and young daughter at his mother’s home at about 7.15pm.
“When I arrived, I opened the manual gate. There was no one on the street. I drove in but suddenly these guys armed with guns came running and they just started banging on the windows of my car,” Masemola said.
Before he could get out, the two men got inside the car.
“The first thing I said was ‘Okay, let me just get out you can take the car’,” he told Pretoria News.
He said they called him a dog and said he was crazy and forced him into the back seat indicating that they wanted to go with him.
He said one man got into the driver’s seat while the other sat with him in the back and forced him to lie down with his head on the lap of one of the hijackers.
Masemola said his mother and fiancée heard the commotion and immediately raised the alarm.
“My mother actually got out of the house and closed the gate and ran out on to the street. When they reversed they bumped the gate.”
He said the men then accused him of pressing a panic button alerting the security company and then closed the gate by remote control.
The man in the back seat with Masemola then pointed the gun at his head telling him to open the gate.
“And then the guy who was in the back seat with me jumped out and as he jumped out the guy next door (neighbour) started shooting with his pellet gun at the driver’s side. I just heard the sound of the pellet gun. Shortly after I could hear intermittent gun sounds.”
He said another neighbour, who is a member of the the city’s metro police, heard his mother’s screams and then came out and began shooting at the criminals as well.
“And then I just felt something on my leg and I knew that it must have been a bullet.
“It was just warm. It didn’t feel painful at all, strangely.”
The gunshots continued but the attackers drove off with Masemola still in the car.
He said the man in the driver’s seat was panicking and was getting lost and even suggested that they kill Masemola while the other man remained calm, and this worried Masemola.
About 10 minutes into the high speed drive the tyre, which had been shot by the metro police officer, gave way.
“At that point I knew that I was going to get out.”
During this time the two men were communicating with their accomplices and had agreed to meet in Rosslyn, but they were unsure where and they were also unsure of their own location.
After the third phone call between them their airtime ran out, ending the communication with their accomplices.
Masemola said the flat tyre coupled with the hijackers not being able to communicate with their accomplices gave him an excellent opportunity to escape.
The driver stopped the car and checked on the tyre then got back into the car and began driving again. Not long after that, they decided they needed to get a spare wheel.
They stopped somewhere dark on the side of the road and pulled Masemola out of the car.
After a while they decided they would put Masemola in the boot in full view of passing motorists.
He said after a while they stopped the car again and he was able to look into the back of the car and saw that the men were not in the car and using the lights from the passing vehicles he was able to see that the rear windscreen of the car was broken.
“I kicked it, I kicked it twice and I jumped out of the car.
“They were already walking back to the car.”
He ran in the middle of the road. A taxi driver helped him to safety.
Pretoria News