A young mother is on antiretrovirals after two men repeatedly injected her with an unknown substance and tried to kidnap her.
|||Durban - A young Phoenix mother is on antiretroviral treatment after two men repeatedly injected her with an unknown substance and tried to kidnap her - barely 50m from her home.
Sivani Govender, 20, was on the way to the shops with her one-year-old son last Thursday when she was attacked.
Two men in a car pulled up alongside her and tried to push her son from her arms as they pulled her into their car.
Govender said on Tuesday that she had barely noticed the white Audi as it passed her travelling in the opposite direction in Lenham Road, in Phoenix.
“I never heard the car as it made a u-turn and came towards me.”
She said the car door opened and a man’s arms reached out to try to pull her into the car.
“He grabbed my shirt, and tried to push my son down on to the pavement.”
Govender’s son, cradled in her right arm, began to scream and cry and although there were two businesses nearby, no one came to her aid.
“The driver just sat there while the guy in the back tried to pull me in.
“He kept barking ‘come in, come in, don’t make a scene’. I was so terrified and shocked. I couldn’t even scream,” she said.
The young mother said she held on to the car door frame, struggling to break free from her assailant’s grip while protecting her son.
“He then stabbed me in the arm to try to get me to let go. But I held on for dear life.”
Govender said she did not see the object used to stab her but only felt the multiple jabs in quick succession.
As she kicked violently – trying to break free – passing vehicles veered into the oncoming side of the road to avoid the Audi.
“They must have thought it was just a squabble between husband and wife or something ... They did not do anything and just passed by.”
She described the man as muscular and strong.
But he only managed to get her part of the way into the car.
“When he saw I was fighting back he ripped my pants and shoved a big needle into my thigh. It stung when he pressed the liquid in. I immediately started feeling drowsy and my body went numb.”
Govender said she was terrified, not knowing where these men wanted to take her or what would happen to her or her son if she relented.
“I imagined my baby going on to the road and getting knocked or something.”
Just when she thought her ordeal would not end, a man whom she described as elderly, stopped behind the Audi.
“When they saw him they sped off. The guy in the back poked his head out the window as they drove off,” she said. Her rescuer drove her to her nearby house where she wobbled down the steps.
She failed to make it inside the outbuilding where she lives with her husband and child. She said she was so drugged, she could no longer hold on to her son.
“I could barely open my eyes. I saw him wandering around near me.”
Govender eventually managed to phone her mother, who lives nearby. “She later told me I was mumbling and talking nonsense.”
Govender was taken to a doctor who gave her a tetanus shot and attended to her bleeding arm. She was also placed on emergency antiretroviral treatment because there was no certainty the needle had not been used before.
Scratched, bruised and swollen, the stay-at-home mother no longer feels safe in her neighbourhood. She now spends her days with her family and only returns to her home when her husband comes home from work.
“I am afraid they know where I live and will come back for me.”
Police spokesman, Captain Thulani Zwane, said a case of attempted kidnapping was being investigated by the Phoenix police.
Daily News