If you were expecting a delivery from a Courier IT van in Midrand and surrounding areas today, then there is a great possibility that your package was stolen by these armed robbers.
Watch: Courier IT van robbed in Midrand
Two employees were captured on CCTV as they were accosted by armed robbers, on Tuesday morning. At approximately 09:00, the courier was offloading a couple of packages at an address in Vorna Valley, Midrand, when suddenly, a white vehicle screeched to a halt in front of the van.
Another white car, believed to be a participant in the robbery, pulled in behind the van, making it impossible for the courier to conjure up an escape. One of the employees ran into the house while his colleague was faced with the threat of armed men demanding that he open the van.
After discarding the van’s keys, the Courier IT employee gave in to the robbers’ demands and opened back door. The robbers were seen loading boxes of unidentified items into the two vehicles before they skidded off.
Courier robbery – Sparrow Ave, Vorna Valley, Midrand. pic.twitter.com/8IoBLZkeo4
— Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) January 26, 2021
Fortunately, neither of the courier employees were injured in the incident. At the time this article was published, the armed robbers were still at large.
Courier robberies the new trend in SA
A threat to the survival of e-commerce in South Africa, courier robberies have become the new norm. Police are inundated with ongoing unsolved robbery cases involving a courier van that was robbed.
In some instances, suspects hijack the van, strip it of every delivery item it holds and ditch it for authorities to find. This, according to Institute for Security Studies (ISS) head of the governance, crime and justice, Gareth Newham, is the new norm in South Africa and it has a lot to do with the rise in online shopping.
“During the lockdown, more people started using couriers to deliver shopping and products to them so as to avoid going out, and with a reduction in people moving around, courier vehicles would have been an obvious target,” he said.
Currently, Gauteng is the hotspot for courier attacks. With very little intelligence on how these syndicates operate, police are at a disadvantage in intercepting robberies before they happen.
The only resolve, Newham told Saturday Star is for e-commerce businesses to work together “to record as much information on all armed robberies on their vehicles.”
“In this way, they will start to notice trends, patterns, hot-spots and the modus operandi of the criminals involved, and this will provide the information needed to identify specific measures to reduce the risk of becoming a target,” he said