A South African man, whose name has not been published, was car-jacked, robbed, and stuffed into the trunk of his car near Johannesburg on Sunday. The robbers, however, had overlooked his mobile phone, which he used to text his girlfriend, Lynn Peters. From there, Twitter took over.
Two armed men grabbed the driver and his Volkswagen Golf in the Honeydew area north-west of Johannesburg at about 9.00pm local time. Car-jacking is a crime that is common in the country — over 10,000 such incidents occurred last year.
Peters immediately tweeted, Be on the look for DSS041GP my boyufriend [sic] has just been hijacked and is in the boot please RT.
RT they did, including Peters’ friend, Tanisha Reddy. From her it was picked up by well-known SA Twitterer, @pigspotter, who retweeted it to his 100,000-plus followers. @pigspotter specialises in identifying and sharing the location of police roadblocks. The police forces in South Africa have frequently been accused of graft and violence, so it does not seem to be criminals alone who make a point of avoiding roadblocks — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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