CANDICE BAILEY
MARIA Araujo was waiting outside a Kensington, Joburg, house at 7.50pm for her 14-year-old daughter Michelle to finish a guitar lesson.
But as Michelle walked down the driveway, she saw her mother being shoved into the back seat of their car by three men, who then sped off. She called her father immediately.
An hour later, thanks to a Tracker signal, her mother was found on Chris Hani Road (formerly Old Potch Road) in Soweto just past Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital. The three men who had hijacked her were in handcuffs and in the custody of the Soweto Flying Squad.
Last night, two hours after Araujo was rescued, the 45-year-old mother-of-two from Tulisa Park recalled her ordeal.
Sitting in her husband’s car, just metres away from two of the three arrested suspects, she said: “I was just thinking about my family. So many things go through your mind, but you just prepare yourself. You just ask God to forgive you for all your sins.”
She added that when an Audi cut in front of her and the three men jumped out, she knew something was amiss.
She had jumped out of the car, telling the men to take her vehicle – a black BMW 320d. But they shoved her onto the back seat, covered her eyes and sped off.
When they got into the car, one of the men took the two chains around Araujo’s neck and her cellphone, and piled her other belongings into a bag.
“You never think it will happen to you. The driver kept on telling me ‘don’t worry, we will drop you off, don’t worry we will drop you off’. I told him ‘just drop me off here, my daughter is just here’.
“But then they got angry and swore at me and told me to shut up,” she recalled.
“The driver kept on telling me ‘Don’t look at me, I’m not your friend’. But as I peeped at him, I could see that he was so young.”
Araujo remembers how the men were constantly on the phone, talking to someone.
“I suppose it was the guy driving the Audi. He must have been following us wherever we went. My eyes were covered until we got here. All of a sudden the car stopped, they opened the car doors and just ran.”
But when the three hijackers fled from the car, the police were on their tails.
In the chase, one of the three suspects was shot in a foot.
While police officers chased after the men, a woman with two small children, who was driving past and saw the commotion, stopped her car and helped Araujo.
She called Araujo’s husband and waited with her until he arrived.
Araujo’s husband Leonel said he was at his wits’ end when his daughter phoned him.
“My first reaction was to call Tracker because I knew there was a tracker fitted on the car. I knew that was the only way she could be found… When I called Tracker, I just vloeked(swore) at everyone, saying ‘find my wife’.”
About 15 minutes after his daughter’s distress call, Leonel was on his way to pick up his 14-year-old daughter when he got a call that his wife had been found on Chris Hani Road.
“The police and Tracker were great… But God was with me. God was definitely with me,” Araujo said.