A four-year-old who was dragged to his death when carjackers sped off with his leg still trapped in his seat-belt in Johannesburg pleaded for his mother to save him in the moments before he died.
‘Mommy help me,’ were the last words Chantel Morris heard from her panicked son Taegrin as he struggled to free himself before the car sped off with him hanging helplessly out of the door on Saturday night.
Morris had loaded Taegrin and his eight-year-old sister into their VW Golf outside their grandmother’s house in Boksburg east of Johannesburg when three hijackers held guns to her head.
‘I asked them to let me get my children out, they could take whatever they wanted, but please let me have my children. I went to the back to pull out Taegrin,’ Morris said.
Her daughter managed to climb out of the car, but as Morris tried to free the boy from his seatbelt his foot became stuck and the hijackers sped off, ripping him out of her hands.
‘I grabbed him and I held him and I pulled him,’ she told Eyewitness News,’ but he was stuck in the seat belt.’
Fighting back tears, she added: ‘I don’t know how many times they drove over him. They drove over my child.’
Crime-ridden: South Africa, in particular its largest city Johannesburg (pictured), has some of the world’s highest rates of violent crime, and carjacking is common
Morris and witnesses to the hijacking ran after the car screaming, but it did not stop. It was later found four kilometres away, with the boy’s battered body next to it.
Police have offered a reward of 50,000 rand ($5,000 or £2,750) for information leading to the arrest of the hijackers.
The little child’s father, Elwin, promised that if police didn’t find those responsible he would find them himself and kill them.
‘I feel like killing these people,’ he said. ‘God must help the police catch them first before I do.’
South Africa has some of the world’s highest rates of violent crime, and carjacking is common.
