Hijackers shop earl: or Christmas
Page 4
Page 5
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
/ Two truck drivers were hijacked in the South-East last week, highlighting the need for drivers to be vigilant in the run-up to Christmas when thieves traditionally steal high value loads to order.
One of the victims was flagged down by bogus policemen on the A2 near Cobham, Kent. They escaped with his consignment of parcels, after forcing him into a car boot at gunpoint. He was trapped there for over an hour.
The other was held up in Greenwich, south-east London, by two men who locked him in a trailer and made off with his £80,000 load of shoes.
The incident on the A2 involved a British driver carrying Parcelforce mail on behalf of Dutch firm Van Osta. He was stopped at gunpoint by two men posing as police in a car with a flashing blue light at 18:20hrs last Wednesday (2 December).
He was tied up, hooded and
driven for over an hour in a car boot before being dumped on the Isle of Sheppey. As CM went to press police were still searching for his white and blue MercedesBenz 1628, liveried in Van Osta colours, registration VB 12 BZ.
The other victim, agency driver Peter Sahlke, was attacked last Thursday while asleep in his locked cab in the Tunnel Motel truck park at Greenwich. The men burst into his cab at 04:00hrs and forced him to lay face down on his bunk.
They drove him in his Iveco Ford 38-tonner, liveried in Barratts Shoes colours, 3km to Brocklebank Road, London SE7, where he was bundled into another trailer. He broke free at about 0430hrs, by which time the thieves had made off with the load and the blue and white truck, registration F615 BHA.
The truck has since been found in Clapham, south-west London, but the load and hijackers were still missing as CM went to press. His hijackers were two white men wearing khaki: one of them shielded his face from Sahlke and the other wore a ski mask, Sahlke, working on contract to Transfleet Services in Coventry, was unhurt but shaken by the ordeal: "I was fast asleep and the next thing I knew the door was opened and this body got in," he says. "I sat up and he turned around and told me not to move. He climbed into the passenger seat and another followed into the driver seat. Both kept shouting at me to tell them how to turn the lights on.
"I was totally paralysed — I could not see whether they had any weapons and I was afraid that if I moved I would be shot through the head or kicked to death," says Sahlke, who carried on working the same day.
The Road Haulage Association is repeating its warning to drivers to beware of bogus police and customs officials.
Sahlke wants truck manufacturers to help drivers protect themselves in the cab: "For the type of job we do out of hours there should be some kind of panic button in the cab and a door chain," he says.
Cl Leeds driver Colin Searle is recovering after armed raiders stole his lorry-load of whisky, dumping him in Preston after a five-hour drive from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.