The car belongs to Connor Tiegs, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student. He told Perdeby that he was in class when his friends Neil Geldenhuys and Shaun de Klerk called him to ask where he had parked his car. When he told them, they informed him that they had just seen a strange man in the vehicle.
“We were driving from campus on Lynnwood Road when we saw a guy in Connor’s car,” said Geldenhuys. They turned around and when they came back, the suspect was no longer in the car. “We then saw him walking and that’s when we got out of the car and chased after him,” said De Klerk. They tackled him and prevented him from leaving the scene. De Klerk told Perdeby that he recognised the suspect because about a week or two ago, he attempted to steal his sister’s car outside their home in Brooklyn.
The suspect had an identical key to the car which he had tried to steal. It is not known where he got it from. He also had a screwdriver, a spanner, his phone and some cash.
The Servest security guards of the City Improvement District were soon on the scene.
When the police arrived at the scene, it emerged that the suspect already has two cases open against him for car theft. On 26 November last year he allegedly stole a car from the corner Burnett and Hilda Streets. His face had been captured on surveillance cameras in a hardware store that he had visited the previous day.
The suspect seemed very calm and cooperated with the police and with the security guards.
Tiegs has opened a case with the police
Photo: Brad Donald
