Arlington tip crime surge prompts police warning

Police have warned the public to be cautious when visiting the Arlington tip amid an explosion of attacks, with a woman’s hand slashed on Wednesday and a man nearly losing an eye in an attack on Sunday.

“Police have noted with concern a considerable increase in robberies at Arlington and are appealing to people to leave all valuables at home and avoid going to the tip alone,” SAPS spokesperson Colonel Priscilla Naidu said.

In an incident at the Victoria Drive site on Wednesday, East Cape Disposals employee Veronica Thorne, 61, was slashed on her hand with a knife as she wrestled with an assailant who was trying to take her bakkie keys.

She and her husband had arrived at the site at about 4.15pm, she said.

“While we were offloading, my husband was outside the vehicle and I had to roll down my window slightly to talk to him and the next thing two guys appeared with knives.

“One held a knife to my husband and the other forced my window down more and put his hand in and tried to take the keys in the ignition.

“I struggled with him and he cut me on my right hand with his knife to try and make me let go,” she said.

“But I got them [the keys] loose and threw them on the floor of the bakkie.”

Her attacker reached in and unlocked the door and wrenched it open but he was not able to find the keys or her cellphone, which she had also thrown on the floor of the vehicle, she said. “Eventually they went away. “I got four stitches in my hand. I was very angry.”

Thorne said she had gone to the Algoa Park police station to report the matter but had been redirected to Walmer police station and would be reporting it there as soon as possible.

On Sunday, Ability Construction owner Craig Hustler, 52, almost lost his left eye when he was stabbed in the face by two thugs who attacked him at Arlington.

He entered the site at about 2pm and parked to begin offloading when the pair jumped him from behind.

“They stabbed me but I picked up a paint tin and hit one of them over the head.

“I had blood and blue paint all over me,” Hustler said.

“They got my wallet and cellphone out of my cubbyhole and ran off.

“The doctor told me 5mm to the side and I would have lost my eye.

“I’ll be fine, but we need to escalate this thing. These criminals wait at the entrance to see who comes in.

“If the metro police just cracked down on the ‘no loitering’ bylaw, it would be a start.”

The owner of another waste management company, who asked not to be named, and whose staff were robbed of their cellphones in a separate incident on Sunday, said the trouble started at the weigh bridge where criminals jumped on the back of incoming trucks.

“You can’t say no because then they will target you.

“Even if they don’t rob you that day, having ‘claimed’ the truck they then have first pickings of its contents before it can reach the pickers waiting patiently at the dump zone.”

The criminals were increasingly using firearms and the broken perimeter fence allowed anyone to access and exit the site at any time, he said.

Bay Skips owner Graham Whitten said a distinction should be drawn between the waste pickers who earned a living collecting recyclables at the tip, and the criminals.

“There are a lot of very good people there,” Whitten said.

“The criminals are too lazy to work, so instead they steal from people and attack them.”

While corporate waste sites were governed by strict rules, metro-owned Arlington was a free-for-all, he said.

“Probably every two months there is an incident where someone is flattened by a bulldozer or a truck.

“The security is useless and the criminals are running riot.”

Questions were put to the metro but no response was received before going to print.