A COSTLY CIGGIE
Football fan suffers broken bones in backyard carjacking attack
CIGARETTES are bad for your health, just ask Madikong Ntuane.
The Masunga man paid a painful price for his nicotine craving, attacked by a spadewielding late night intruder as he popped out the house for a quick puff.
The avid football fan had been watching a gripping evening Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) match, when he left his wife lying on a mattress in the living room to spark up.
“I watch football with my wife, but most of the time she’ll doze off because she’s not really a football person,” he told The Voice following his release from Nyangabgwe Referral Hospital.
After the game finished,
Ntuane stepped outside for his tobacco fix when he spotted a lanky figure walking in the middle of his yard.
Startled, the trespasser quickly ducked behind the house.
Believing that the tall intruder had scampered off and jumped over the boundary wall, Ntuane leaned on his Land Cruiser to enjoy his smoke.
“Out of nowhere, this guy came at full speed towards me, moving faster than Isaac Makwala and giving me very little time to react. He smashed me on the head with an old spade he had picked behind the house,” narrated Ntuane, adding the assailant continued to pummel his head with the spade while demanding keys to his Land Cruiser.
“The only thing he said was ‘ Tsisa di key (bring the keys),” continues Ntuane, describing his attacker as tall, dark and angry.
In his efforts to block the blows and protect his head from the spade, Ntuane suffered a broken left hand.
“He hit me several times on my head, arms and knees before I collapsed. That’s when he went inside to look for the car keys.”
All the while, his wife remained blissfully unaware that all hell had broken out in her yard.
“She, for a moment, thought I wanted to go somewhere,” he said.
When the would-be car thief finally got his hands on the keys, he opened the gate, unlocked the vehicle, started it and engaged the reverse gear.
“He struggled to reverse the
car; that’s when I crawled out through the back gate to a nearby home where I was certain to find people,” he said.
Weak and bloody, Ntuane dragged his battered body towards a group of men who were knocking back a few cold ones and related his ordeal.
“Sadly, they were too loud and the thief slipped away when he heard them approaching. It was at this point that I realised he had forgotten to disengage the hand-break and that’s why the car couldn’t reverse,” explained Ntuane.
While he narrowly escaped with his life, Ntuane is concerned that someone out there might not be lucky as cases of hijacking are increasing in Masunga and the North East.
“There’s no hope that this person will ever get caught. It takes about 10 minutes to steal a car here and cross in to Zimbabwe at an ungazetted point. There’s a spot in Zwenshambe where they cross. The border fence is down, and in fact a road has now developed, which is being used by these carjackers and other criminal elements from the neighbouring country,” he said.
“They’re not afraid of anyone. They simply come in and go back to their country with our belongings,” lamented Ntuane, who called for an increased police and Botswana Defence Force (BDF) presence in the area.
“We need our soldiers to be manning the border. A high presence of soldiers and police will deter these criminals,” opined Ntuane.