Rock throwers strike at Millenium Bridge
|Published
06/11/2013 Durban Stone was thrown at Alister Wybrow's X3 car while he was passing Millenium Bridge. PICTURE: SIBUSISO NDLOVU 06/11/2013 Durban Stone was thrown at Alister Wybrow's X3 car while he was passing Millenium Bridge. PICTURE: SIBUSISO NDLOVU
Durban - There has been yet another rock-throwing incident in daylight; this time at the Millennium Bridge near the Gateway shopping centre on Tuesday morning.
Mount Edgecombe businessman Alistair Wybrow, 55, was driving from his home to his business in Chatsworth when the incident happened.
“At about 9am, when I passed under the Millennium Bridge, I heard a loud bang and glass shattering. It all happened so quickly.”
Wybrow said he was too nervous to stop, so he pulled over at a construction site further down the road to inspect the damage.
“When I looked back at the bridge there was no one running away, so I don’t know who was responsible for this,” he said.
Wybrow said he was sure the rock had come from the bridge as it hit the sunroof directly.
“I thought it was concrete from the construction site, but it couldn’t have been, because the road workers were further down from where I heard the bang, and it would have hit the windscreen.
“The police said they were going to check the cameras installed in the area to see if they could trace the perpetrators.”
Wybrow, who has been driving on the same road every day for seven years, said this was the first time he had encountered rock-throwing. The quote for a new sunroof - which he showed The Mercury - was R41 000.
On Wednesday, The Mercury reported a similar incident in which a stone shattered the windscreen of Tessa Douglas from uMhlanga as she was driving on the M4, northbound, on Monday.
Also in the past few days, Mount Edgecombe resident Debby Macpherson’s windscreen was smashed as she was driving near the Blackburn bridge on the N2. In August last year, Vishani Rabindranath was badly hurt when a rock hit her husband’s car on the N2.
Metro police spokesman Eugene Msomi said the N2 was now a stone-throwing hot spot. He said criminals aimed to rob victims as they pulled off the road to check the damage to their cars.
“If you see someone lurking on a bridge, change lanes and report it to the police immediately, so it can be checked out.”
The Mercury