Police 'combing through CCTV footage' at Mayfair school where grade 5 pupil was kidnapped

The police are combing through surveillance footage in a bid to identify the abductors of a grade 5 pupil outside the EP Bauman Primary School in Mayfair, Johannesburg.

This is according to a source at the school, speaking to TimesLIVE.

A security camera which is focused on the upper gate of the school is in a prime position to have captured the exact moment when three heavily armed men called the 11-year-old's name and took her screaming into their silver Toyota Yaris. 

Pupils on Thursday entered the school before the Covid-19 protocols were observed, as a precaution, because the little girl was taken while she was lining up at the gate to have her temperature taken.

“Over in seconds” were the whispers from parents waiting for their children to come out of school on Thursday.

A woman, who asked not to be named, said she was dropping her daughter off at the lower gate, where the grade 1-4s are dropped off, on Wednesday when she heard screams. 

“I don't know if it was the girl screaming or the crowd — I was [also] screaming. I ran into the school grounds calling the children to follow. It was very confusing in those moments. 

“There was nothing anyone could do,” she said.

TimesLIVE's sister publication Sowetan quoted a woman as saying her 14-year-old sister, who witnessed it, had told her: “One of the men seated at the back of the vehicle pulled her by the legs, forcing her inside the vehicle as she fought them ... We heard her screaming until the car disappeared.”

The abducted girl is the child of a man who owns businesses in the Mayfair area. 

TimesLIVE