Mitchells Plain residents are on the hunt for a “mad man” who viciously attacked a boy after the laaitie and his friends played karrentjie in his broken-down bakkie last week.
The angry parents of Duwayne Wyngaard, 13, say their child could have been killed after the man chased him with a pit bull, beat him with a spade and baseball bat and poured Jeyes Fluid over the scared laaitie last Tuesday.
Duwayne was hospitalised and left with stitches on his face and head and marks across his back.
The boy says at about 3pm on Tuesday, he was walking with three friends in Woodlands when they came across an old rusted blue bakkie and jumped in.
“We were playing karrentjie and the man came out and shouted at us,” he explains.
“He said we were taking wires from the bakkie but we weren’t and he just started chasing us with his pit bull and two other dogs.”
Duwayne says as his friends escaped, he hid in a neighbour’s yard but was caught and dragged to the home of Mogamat Salie du Toit, 46.
“He hit me with a bicycle pump on my back and took me to his garage,” says Duwayne.
“There was a domestic worker in the house who told him to leave me but then he took out a spade and baseball bat and hit the spade broken over my back.
“I covered my face and told him to stop so he said I must hou my bek. When he was finished hitting me, he gave me a banana and an orange and left me there.”
The child was held captive in the garage and repeatedly beaten while his friends ran home to call his father Randall, 41.
“When I got there, he refused to let the laaitie out and the police came,” says Randall.
Officers went to collect his mother Gail at work and the child was taken to Mitchells Plain District Hospital and later transferred to Groote Schuur.
The doctors confirmed that there was no permanent damage and discharged him.
Gail says angry residents marched to Du Toit’s home in Daphne Crescent but he had already fled so they smashed the windows of two cars standing in the yard.
His elderly mother, Abieda, 71, says hundreds of people surrounded her home and she was frightened.
“I don’t know what happened because we were not here, but I can tell you he has a mental illness and snaps sometimes,” she says.
“He beat his wives and even fought at work. He ran away and we have not seen him since that day.”
Police spokesperson Sergeant Noloyiso Rwexana confirms that a case of assault with the intent to commit grievous bodily harm has been registered with no arrests.
Community Police Forum (CPF) Byron De Villiers, says: “As a community we are furious because he could have killed this child. We believe that if he is a mental patient, he needs to be hospitalised as he is a danger to children.”