By Rex Mphisa
CHEEKY armed robbers who stripped a Beitbridge man of his Toyota Double Cab car Sunday drove through the perennial Makhado security roadblock defying all security agents and servicemen stationed there.
In broad daylight, the robbers knocked over the barriers on the road sending police officers and soldiers screaming, scurrying and running away with dear life as the stolen car raged and roared past.
The officers at the “no-nonsense” roadlock known to be strict were left hapless bystanders in a scene only fit for fiction James Bond or lately Jimmy Diesel adventure movies like “The Fast and Furious” and not real life occurrence.
The officer commanding Betbridge Police Distict Chief Superintendent Mesuli Ncube confirmed the incident.
“The officers were surprised because everyone believed the vehicle had long left Beitbridge. They (fleeing armed robbers) knocked the police cones and sped fast past. They could have hit the officers,” he said.
The incident occured around 10am, almost 18 hours after the carjacking from Kwalu Suburb in Beitbridge Town.
Ncube said police operations were on to track the suspects he said had not reached Gwanda where police were prepared by communication just after the Makhado incident.
“We have alerted all police stations countrywide,” he said.
He was surprised the car was still in Beitbridge long after having been taken from its owner.
The owner of the car Mayor Masimba Meso said he was forced out if his car by gunmen who fired some warning shots to show they meant business in the Kwalu suburb of Beitbridge.
The three carjackers may have been waiting for the moment because the car was parked outside his yard from the time he took delivery of it from the storage facility at Manica Freight Transit Shed.
On Monday he told Ziyah News Network he had just collected the car when the armed robbers struck.
Shots were fired at the scene during the robbery.
The suspected robbers spoke in Shona, he said.
On Monday afternoon Meso said they had gone across the district and as far as Chikwrakwara in the direction stolen vehicles were usually taken to Mozambique which provides a ready market for stolen cars.
Carjackers have several times struck in Beitbridge.
Recently a woman was lucky to escape after robbers failed to drive away her car whose secret devices disabled the vehicle they later abandoned at Tshitaudze businsss centre.
À few months earlier another was not so lucky after her Toyota GD6 Doule cab was forcibly taken and has never been recovered.