Boy (10) lives to tell his abduction tale
Child survives for seven days in dark, closed drain
A kidnapped boy survived on an orange and a bottle of water while he was held captive for seven days in North West.
The 10-year-old from Verdwaal informal settlement near Lichtenburg was abducted on his way home from school over a week ago.
He said his kidnapper stopped him while he was walking with his friend. “He told my friend to leave. He then placed a knife on my neck and told me not to scream and go with him.”
The Grade 4 pupil said the man took him to a shack and tied him before locking the shack. The following day he came back, untied him and walked with him for about a kilometre to a drain in an open veld in Itsoseng.
He was tied up again and thrown into the drain.
He said the man then closed the drain with a big rock. “I was now left in the dark... there were a lot of rocks in there.”
Asked what he ate while down there, he said: “He gave me an orange and a bottle of water. He had tied my legs and hands, so I was struggling to eat.”
The boy, who seemed distant and traumatised, said he had to relieve himself there when nature called and stayed with the waste.
When the Sowetan team spoke to him yesterday, his legs were swollen and he could not walk because of injuries sustained from being tied with a shoe lace.
He said he slept in his school uniform. “There were no blankets and I was feeling cold,” he said.
He was released on Friday after police had received a tip-off and arrested the man.
The accused, Ketlamoreng Kaudi, 23, appeared briefly in the Itsoseng Magistrate’s Court yesterday.
He faced kidnapping and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm charges. Kaudi, who had a bandage wrapped around his head, was remanded in custody and the case was postponed to September 12 for a formal bail application
The boy’s mother said after two days of her son’s disappearance, she had received an SMS with “Please call me”.
As they were desperately looking for her son, she called back. “I was shocked to hear my son talking, he sounded weak and frightened, I felt helpless,” she said.
She said the man made the boy to speak and then demanded money. “He demanded R100 000 and said he was in Stellenbosch.”
On Wednesday, he reduced the money to R1 500 but the family told him they did not have the money. “He told us to send it through Shoprite or he will leave my son to starve to death,” she said.
The woman said the family knew the man because he had dated her cousin in the past. She suspected he kidnapped her son because he was angry at her because he believed that she might have influenced her cousin to dump him.
They broke up last year and the boy’s mother said he had threatened the family several times after the split.