Loft caretaker tells about hijacking
Loft caretaker offended by allegations of not assisting the woman who was hijacked.
The caretaker of the Printers Loft premises in Helderkruin where a woman was hijacked in November deemed it necessary to set the record straight. He spoke to the Record on Wednesday 4 December.
Freddie Snyman, caretaker of the Loft, remembers a different scenario to the one that Mickie Mc Geer had described in her hijacking complaint. According to Mc Geer, she was on the premises at the time of the hijacking, waiting for a client (being an agent by profession) to show her a rental space. She also alleged that the security guard on the premises never came to her aid, despite her cry for help. Friction between Mc Geer and Snyman came to the fore. Allegations were also made that the caretaker didn’t assist her when she confronted him.
“First of all,” Snyman explained, “this incident did not happen on the premises, but on the sidewalk outside.
“She was outside with the windows of her vehicle open, and being an older woman, she clearly was identified as an easy target.”
Snyman said that after the incident he too was puzzled why the woman did not park on the premises, as she was there for business reasons.
“Why didn’t she park inside? We would have had no issue with letting her in before her client got here.”
According to Snyman he went so far as to let her use his cellphone to call her husband and when her client arrived, he went to the trouble to show the client the rental space, leaving her to calm down.
“Not so much as a car radio had been stolen on this premises, and the security staff was not meant to work outside the premises where she put herself at risk.”
The Roodepoort Police had escalated the Record’s questions as to why procedures weren’t followed with the hijacking case to provincial police. The Record is awaiting comment.
