Hijack boy home after spotting mom on TV

"This is my mommy on TV."

The words were spoken by six-year-old Mongezi Phike near the end of five days of searching for him.

Yesterday, Mongezi's mother, Lizzy, said her son, abducted in a hijacking, told her that, while he was at a shelter for children in Jeppestown, Johannesburg, he saw her on TV.

He told one of the caregivers that that was his mother.

His mother had appeared on the 7pm TV news on Saturday appealing for his return.

A caretaker at the shelter phoned the commander of the Bronkhorstspruit police station - and at 3am on Sunday Lizzy was reunited with her son.

"Yo! Yo! I'm so happy," Lizzy said yesterday at her home in Ekangala, near Bronkhorstspruit.

Later yesterday morning Lizzy woke her husband, Aaron, in hospital to tell him that Mongezi had been found. Aaron had been injured in the hijacking.

Mongezi and Aaron were hijacked on Tuesday.

Aaron was bound, pistolwhipped and dumped at a construction site.

The hijackers then drove off with Mongezi and dumped him in Johannesburg after feeding him for five days. He was found and taken to a shelter.

Gauteng Premier David Makhura visited the Phike household yesterday and promised help for the boy and his mother.

Makhura earlier yesterday visited the Morris family, in Reiger Park, on the East Rand. The Morris's four-year-old son, Taegrin, was killed in another hijacking.

The boy was entangled in his seat belt and dragged for more than 4km alongside the car as the robbers fled in it.

Gauteng deputy police commissioner Major-General Tebello Mosikili said the police were offering a R50000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the hijackers in each of the two cases.

Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Noxolo Kweza said a man was helping the police with their inquiries but was not a suspect.