Couple shattered by hijacking and shooting
A MOTORIST has described his dramatic attempt to save his wife before she was shot by hijackers while trying frantically to unbuckle her seat belt.
The attack on Steven and Devi Naidoo – opposite the Gandhi Luthuli Peace Park in Phoenix – was one of several hijackings in and around Durban in the past week.
The couple were on their way to their Whetstone home at about 8.30pm last Wednesday, after visiting Steven’s elderly mother in hospital, when they heard a tapping sound on the window.
“Before I could react, two shots went off, and my door swung open,” Steven, 57, told POST.
“A hijacker grabbed me by my clothing and dragged me out of the car. I fell to the ground.”
He said a second hijacker approached the passenger door at the same time. He heard his 56-year-old wife screaming for help.
“He opened fire on me but I managed to dodge the bullets and grab my wife. She was shot, but at the time neither of us realised it,” he said.
Steven said the men fled with their car, a Golf 6 TDi.
“My wife started to feel ill and she was slipping in and out of conciousness. I still did not know she had been shot. There was no blood and I thought she was just reacting to the trauma of the incident,” he said. “I contacted my son and he called the security company, KZN VIP, and the police.”
While waiting for help and with his wife lying on the pavement, Steven tried to flag down other motorists, but none would help, he said.
“I must have tried about 50 cars and only one couple stopped to help us. The woman was a nurse and she checked on my wife and discovered that she had been shot… thankfully, the security team with an ambulance came to our aid.”
They went to Mount Edgecombe Hospital while the police and KZN VIP searched for the vehicle, which had a a tracking device fitted by the company Steven works for.
Security company boss, Glen Naidoo, said: “We tracked the vehicle to KwaMashu A Section, one of the notorious and most dangerous parts of the area. Here a shoot-out between police, security guards and the suspects ensued. The suspects fled.”
Back at the hospital, it was found that the bullet had hit Devi’s upper right shoulder, gone through her right breast and lodged in her stomach, inches from her liver.
“This is a traumatic time for us and we are praying she recovers,” Steven said. “It would be very risky for doctors to perform surgery.”
He said he was thankful to all those who helped them. “This ordeal has turned our lives upside down… you think it won’t happen to you, but it can. It’s left us shattered and traumatised,” he said.
His advice to motorists: “Don’t be fooled, hijackers are organised and professional. It took them less than five minutes to turn our world upside down.”
In a separate incident, a 23-year-old woman was hijacked at Isipingo Beach on Friday night and taken on a terror ride with the suspects. On social media emergency groups called on South Africans to keep a lookout for her white Golf GTi.
According to reports, the suspects took the woman to a nearby ATM and she was made to withdraw an undisclosed amount of cash. She was left in Isipingo and her car was recovered in uMlazi.
A man was hijacked in Juniper Road, Overport, on Monday night. The robbers made off with his vehicle but he was unharmed.