A gang of heavily armed men stormed the rest stop’s 24-hour convenience shop, on the hunt for the store and restaurant deposit boxes.<\/p>\n
Details of the robbery remain sketchy and the police presently rely on one witnesses account, saying that an armed man stormed the convenience store where a woman was ordered to the ground.<\/p>\n
The staffer says that the robber who entered the shop immediately asked about the panic button before ordering her away from it, and onto her stomach. She didn’t see any other robbers after being ordered to the ground.<\/p>\n
She says she only heard a loud bang, after which she noticed the robbers had fled.<\/p>\n
A group of friends who stopped for diesel, however says that they counted at least six men, each armed with R4 assault rifles.<\/p>\n
“We stopped at the diesel pumps shortly after midnight on our way back to town, I went into the shop with my fianc\u00e9 and friends remained behind at the pumps,” a victim who wishes to remain anonymous told the Observer on Monday.<\/p>\n
She said that on her way back to their car, she saw four men charging the shop with rifles in hand.<\/p>\n
“I initially thought it was security but when I saw that they all had balaclavas covering their faces, I immediately knew it was a robbery”.<\/p>\n
She ran to the pumps where she saw another armed man with his rifle pointed at her fianc\u00e9 and friends.<\/p>\n
“I changed direction and ran to our car which was parked a short distance away from the pumps, I crouched behind the car but another gunman saw me and ordered me to the ground”.<\/p>\n
One of her friends saw her laying on the ground next to the car and told her frantic fianc\u00e9 where she was.<\/p>\n
“My fianc\u00e9 was chatting to our friends when he suddenly felt a cold hard rifle in his back,” the woman says.<\/p>\n
“My fianc\u00e9 was very worried after a number of shots were fired inside the shop where I had been seconds before,” the traumatized woman says.<\/p>\n
The petrol attendant immediately ran for safety, while her fiance and friends were ordered to the ground, and searched for wallets and weapons.<\/p>\n
“At one stage, our other female companion was ordered back into the car,” the woman says.<\/p>\n
“They took the car keys, so we thought they were going to drive off with her, which luckily didn’t happen”.<\/p>\n
She says that while her friend was getting into the car, the alarm went off, sending more chills down their spines, “as anything could set them off shooting”.<\/p>\n
Shortly after ordering her friend back into the car, a white Golf 6 suddenly came rushing past where she was laying alone and afraid, picking up robbers as it went along.<\/p>\n
The car keys were however thrown back to the traumatized men in the company, both still face down on the ground.<\/p>\n
“When they left, we just got into our separate cars and sat there stunned for a while,” the woman says. According to the SAPS, deposit boxes from the store and Debonairs pizza outlet, were stolen.<\/p>\n
The exact loss was not divulged.<\/p>\n
The Guardian Group, responsible for security at both Shell Ultra rest stops, could not be reached for comment before print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A victim of Saturday’s armed robbery at the Middelburg Shell Ultra City rest stop says the trauma of the event will remain with her forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":28074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Gerhard Rheeder","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"category_labels":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}