Here Comes Treble: Life Is A Soap Opera
''Life is never predictable and very often turns out to be far more bizarre than the most heatedly imagined plots dreamed up in fiction.,'' says Isabel Bradley in telling a true-life drama involving bombing automatic banking machines, violent armed robberies and murder.
“Your tenant was shot on your property last night by the police,” Jenny’s neighbour announced over the phone.
“WHAT?” Jenny responded. She had returned to the country for a short working holiday and until that moment hadn’t even given her house a thought. It was safely leased to someone who paid the rent regularly at a generous rate, there was nothing to do or worry about. That was, until this moment.
The police involved in the shoot-out were an elite unit investigating corruption and organised crime.
Jenny rushed to the house to meet a police lieutenant and find out exactly what had happened.
Her tenant, whose identification documents and work references ultimately proved to be forgeries, was a known ‘king-pin’ in an organised-crime network. He was a hijacker, notorious for shooting the drivers and passengers of the cars he stole. He was involved in bombing automatic banking machines, violent armed robberies, murder.
The police had been on his trail for months, but until that Friday night, he’d remained a step ahead of them. From Durban, through Kwa-Zulu Natal, into Gauteng, it seemed he was informed each time they came near as he would vanish again. When the Durban team of elite policemen received a tip-off that their suspect was living in Jenny’s house, they travelled to Johannesburg without telling the local police. They were convinced the criminals had corrupt members of the force working for them country-wide, telling them each time the elite team was about to catch up with them.
The Durban-based police arrived at the house late on Friday evening just as the hijacker arrived ‘home’ in a newly acquired vehicle. The police challenged him and he ran, trying to leap over the high wall at the back of the property. The electrified fence, however, shocked him and he fell back into the property, where the police shot him. He was carried off to hospital under police guard, eventually to stand trial and be made to pay for his crimes.
In the aftermath of the dramatic arrest, the man’s girlfriends, there were at least six of them living in the house, had to be legally evicted, their goods gone through and those that were provably stolen, confiscated. The rest had to be removed as soon as possible.
The garden was searched for buried explosives or bodies. Thankfully neither was found, though there were parts of stolen vehicles in the untamed undergrowth. Many plants from the previously-beautiful landscaping had been destroyed, providing camouflage for the wiring that had been stripped from numerous vehicles.
Jenny’s working holiday was extended so that she could oversee the restoration of the house to a state fit to be rented again.
What should have been a relaxing few weeks, turned into a fraught time that seemed to be straight out of a soap opera.
Life is never predictable and very often turns out to be far more bizarre than the most heatedly imagined plots dreamed up in fiction.
Until next time…. ‘here comes Treble!’
© Copyright Reserved
by Isabel Bradley
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To read more of Isabel's ever-surprising and always entertaining columns please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/here_comes_treble/
