New car-tracking technology may lead to more fatalities, reports Angella Johnson
HAVING an anti-hijack tracking device on your vehicle may help get it returned but it could also get you killed. A Johannesburg businessman discovered this paradox after he was kidnapped and left for dead along the roadside.
Ian Mirk, managing director of Panasonic Business Systems in Rivonia, north of Johannesburg, was subjected to over three hours of mental torture culminating in physical assault and attempted murder, after he was abducted in his white Pajero four-wheel drive.
The hijackers forced him to reveal his cashcard number and withdrew R1 000 before abandoning the Pajero, after he revealed it was connected to the Netstar system. The vehicle was discovered more than an hour before he was found wandering in a state of shock along the roadside.
Mirk (38) had arrived home in the northern suburb of Douglasdale at about 7.30pm two weeks ago. He was in the process of removing his possessions from the car when three gunmen appeared at his still-open gate.
“They beckoned me to the gate and told me to lie down on the ground,” he explained. “I had no time to activate my panic button.
“Then they took my keys and told me to get into the Pajero. I asked why and they said they wanted directions to the highway.”
When they got to the Fourways on-ramp Mirk expected to be let out, but the hijackers had other ideas.
On discovering the vehicle was carrying a tracking device they threatened to shoot Mirk unless he told them where the box had been attached.
He had been unable to activate his panic button but the thieves knew that once released, Mirk would contact the company and the tracing would begin.
So they took their quarry with them, sitting in the front passenger seat. “We drove to the Regent’s Park area and kept going around in circles for some time,” Mirk remembers.
“We appeared to be following people at random and I guessed they were looking for another vehicle to steal.” He was right. At about 9pm the gang parked the Pajero and two of them announced they were going to “organise transport”. One remained behind with the now blindfolded prisoner.
Some 20 minutes later the two came back in a small
blue car. Mirk was bundled into the boot. “I kept asking why they were still holding me and they were very polite and said they were not planning to harm me.” From his cramped position in the locked boot, he guessed that he was being driven along the motorway. Another 20 minutes later the car was stopped and he was dragged out.
“We were about 100m from some kind of depot and they pushed me into the thicket of some bushes.” Lying face down in the dirt, Mirk was waiting to be shot. Instead the men used his tie and other bits of clothing to bind and gag him.
He was also blindfolded again. Still the gang made no move to kill him. “Then they pulled my trousers down and cut off my underpants with a knife. I had no idea what they intended. They took turns to squeeze my testicles as hard as they could.”
A makeshift noose was placed around his neck at the same time. He remembered nothing more until he woke up at about 10.30pm in the lounge of a Sandton couple who had found him wandering half-naked and half-conscious along the roadside.
He had facial and body bruises consistent with having been thrown from a moving car. Police surmised that he had probably been left for dead.
Describing his abductors as polite, educated and fresh-faced young men in their 20s, Mirk said he had sympathy with the thieves. “But not with the mental anguish they put me through. However, I suppose I’m lucky they did not succeed in killing me.”
A worrying trend in the car theft industry is the fact the many crooks now assume their victims have tracking devices fitted to their cars and know the only way to prevent it being activated (if the panic button has not yet been pushed), is by killing the driver.
“It’s almost a Catch-22 situation. I think Netstar should tell their customers of this new risk,” complained Mirk’s wife, Sanne. “They tell you their recovery time for stolen vehicles is usually about 90 minutes but I’d rather lose the vehicle and keep my life.”
A spokesperson for Netstar said thieves have no way of knowing a vehicle has the device unless the customer tells them. “The fact that he told them put his life at risk.”
When told this might put all drivers at risk from hijackers who assume they are lying, she responded: “No system is foolproof. We can’t stop extreme measures.”