Motorist traumatised after police 'arrest'
August 19 2013 at 10:21am
By Valeska Abreu
By Valeska Abreu
Pretoria News
A five-hour ordeal in
the back of a Joburg metro police department (JMPD) van has left a Waterkloof
man traumatised and fearful of the men in uniform. Photo: Valeska Abreu
Pretoria - A five-hour ordeal in the
back of a Joburg metro police department (JMPD) van has left a Waterkloof man
traumatised and fearful of the men in uniform.
What was supposed to be a normal
afternoon drive home from work along the N1 soon turned into
something from a Carte Blanche
documentary, Roberto Strydom said, with his hand covering the right side of his
bruised face.
The 24-year-old said he was stopped by
three members of the JMPD on the Olifantsfontein off-ramp, thinking it was a
routine check.
As he was not speeding, he gladly
stopped.
“The two white men asked me for my
driving licence while a third black male checked my vehicle. Something about
them put me off, though. Their uniform and even vehicle just didn’t look too
legit, but I still co-operated with them. They said they could smell alcohol on
my breath, but I said that was impossible because it was half-four in the
afternoon and I had just left work.”
Strydom said he was forcefully pulled
from his vehicle, pushed against his car, and asked for money or he risked
being taken to jail.
“I told them they could take me to jail
and do the Breathalyser test, and that would prove I hadn’t drunk, but they
started getting agitated with me. That’s when they cuffed me and dragged me to
their bakkie, and threw me in the back of the vehicle.”
Strydom’s initial thought was that he
was being taken to a police station, as his alleged kidnappers did not read out
his rights or say much, but as darkness fell Strydom realised he was in
trouble.
“I started feeling claustrophobic. I
could see out of the van, I was banging on the front of the van to get the
attention of the officers to find out what was going on.
“I felt so afraid as the hours went by
and I lost track of time. I had no idea what they were going to do with me,
considering all these stories you read about.”
Strydom said he became completely
disoriented.
“The next thing I remember is that they
stopped and opened the door, they aimed a bright light into my face and grabbed
me out. All of a sudden I felt a heavy blow to my face. One guy said again that
if I paid them, they would let me go.
Strydom said he refused and was again
hit with something.
“The next thing I remember was waking
up in the back seat of my car, tied to the door with a cable tie.”
It took him a while before he managed
to put on the hazard lights of his car. He also managed to grab his cellphone,
which was vibrating at the time with an incoming call from his brother.
“I spoke to my brother and he kept
asking where I was, but I could not see anything as I was dazed. I forced
myself to focus and could see the name of a tile company and gave it to him.”
A patrolling security van came to his
rescue.
“The guy stopped and then helped cut me
loose, and then told me where I was. I called my brother back and told him I
was on Old Johannesburg Road. Soon after that paramedics, police and my family
arrived.”
This was not, however, the first ordeal
Strydom had experienced. In 2010, he was assaulted and tortured in the back
seat of his vehicle by hijackers for more than eight hours. He escaped after
another car drove into them and the hijackers fled.
“It took me a long while and a lot of
therapy sessions to get past that, and now this happens, worst of all by men in
uniform. You hear about this kind of stuff all the time, but it is still so
surreal when it happens to you,” he said.
Strydom said a part of him still
doubted that the officers were genuine JMPD members.
JMPD spokesman Wayne Minnaar said an
internal investigation was under way.
Pretoria News
