Police foil cigarette-truck hijacking

28 July 2015 - 21:11 By Katharine Child
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Cigarettes. File photo
Cigarettes. File photo
Image: Gallo Images/Thinkstock

A cigarette-truck hijacking on the N4 towards Emalahleni was thwarted on Tuesday after a telephone tip-off to police.

As seven men were offloading the cigarettes from a British American Tobacco truck police arrived.

Gauteng police spokesman Major Mack Mngomezulu said that one suspect fled in a BMW. Six others attempted to run away and were caught.

“Immediately after the six were arrested one of the six started to vomit and died on the scene” according to Mngomezulu.

The other five are in custody.

Tabby Tsengiwe‚ the spokesman for British American Tobacco - one of the biggest distributors of cigarettes in South Africa - told The Times in June that 1‚412 of its transport vehicles were hijacked annually. This equates to about four attacks a day.

According to a police report to the Gauteng portfolio committee on community safety in November last year‚ 20.5% of hijackings in the province involved BAT vehicles transporting cigarettes.

Francois van der Merwe‚ CEO of the Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa‚ said at the time that these hijackings were controlled by syndicates.

Cigarettes are easy to distribute illegally because of their small size. One truck can hold as many as 10‚000 cigarettes - which are sold at R3 each‚ netting criminals R30‚000 for a single hijacking.

RDM News Wire.

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