Reiger Park is Hijacking Central

24 July 2014 - 02:15 By Shaun Smillie
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
GONE TOO SOON: The mutilated body of Taegrin Morris, 4, of Reiger Park, was found at Boksburg Lake on the East Rand after he was killed in a hijacking on Saturday night
GONE TOO SOON: The mutilated body of Taegrin Morris, 4, of Reiger Park, was found at Boksburg Lake on the East Rand after he was killed in a hijacking on Saturday night
Image: LAUREN MULLIGAN

Above Daisy Street a Cartrack helicopter circles low. It is a sight unusual enough for residents to wander out of their houses and stare up at the sky.

The helicopter is presumably hunting for a stolen vehicle somewhere in Reiger Park, Boksburg, on the East Rand.

This is a community that has seen the worst of violent crime over the past couple of decades. When the gang violence was at its worst, Pastor Wayne Ballakistan, who grew up on Daisy Street, was officiating at three, sometimes four, funerals a week.

But the gangs are quiet for the moment and the chopper overhead is a sign of something else.

Reiger Park's latest crime problem is hijackings.

"Over the past three weeks we have seen a hijacking a week. It shows that they are back in the area," said the secretary of the Reiger Park Community Policing Forum, Trevor Reeby.

It was on Daisy Street that the worst of these hijackings took place, when four-year-old Taegrin Morris was dragged for kilometres beside the car as hijackers sped off in his family's GTI golf.

His mother, Chantel, was unable to get him out of the car fast enough and he became entangled in the seat belt.

Taegrin was found dead an hour later at Boksburg Lake.

There have been other such brutal hijackings.

Ballakistan told of a mother unable to get her two children out of the back of her car before hijackers made off with it.

Another local pastor was forced into the boot of his vehicle during a hijacking.

According to Reeby, the cars most targeted are VW Golfs and BMWs.

For three months, Reeby said, hijacking was under control in the area after the community put pressure on the police to sort the problem out.

"Word on the street is that this is a syndicate that is at work," he said.

The community knows who is working for the syndicates but it is difficult to gather enough evidence for an arrest.

The hijackings are not the work of a local gang, Reeby and criminologist Rudolph Zinn believe. Local gangsters do not have the know-how and resources needed to dispose of "hot" cars, they said.

The spike in hijackings in Reiger Park is contrary to what is happening in the rest of South Africa: in the past decade hijackings have dropped from about 16000 to fewer than 10000 a year. The decline, said Zinn, is a result of better anti-hijacking technology and the formation of specialised police units.

But syndicates will periodically target an area, said Zinn. Their choice of suburb has to do with access to highways, which provide quick escape routes, and the presence of "field workers", the guys on the ground who hold people at gunpoint.

Vehicles are often stolen to order, explained Zinn. Even before a vehicle is hijacked, fake number plates for it are cloned and papers forged.

"Half of [all] hijacked cars are taken out of the country but many of them are bought back and sold here," he said.

A syndicate will move a car across a border or to a "chop shop" for dismemberment within six to eight hours of it being stolen.

But this is not just a problem for the police to deal with, believes Pastor Hein April. Solving Reiger Park's crime problems comes down to empowering the young and taking back the streets, he said.

He wants community committees to monitor crime at a street level.

"We can't be a reactive community; we are going to change to being proactive."

April has a name for his project: "Genoeg is Genoeg, Enough is Enough".

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now