Hijacker fails at Langlaagte traffic light, then JMPD finds an unlicensed firearm

A driver stopped at the lights at Main Reef and Vogt Street in Langlaagte on 5 November and drove away with the vehicle still under them. The Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department says a man tried to hijack a black Jetour T2 at that intersection and failed, and that its Region F1 operations officers arrested him there.

The same arrest produced a second count. The JMPD says the man was held for attempted hijacking and for possession of an unlicensed firearm. The department has not said in its public account where the firearm was found, how it was found, or what kind of weapon it was. What it has said is that the man was detained at Sophiatown SAPS.

An attempted hijacking at a set of traffic lights is the ordinary shape of the crime in this city, and the ordinary shape of the outcome is that the car is gone and nobody is caught. On this corner the attempt came apart at the light, and the man accused of making it went into custody instead of driving off in a Jetour T2. That is the fact the JMPD is putting on the record, and it is the one that matters to the driver who kept the car.

The department put its own framing on the arrest in the same post, in a single line: lawlessness will not be tolerated. It is a short sentence for a corner where a firearm was allegedly in the picture and the target was a private car at a red light.

What the public record does not yet carry is the part that decides what happens next. The JMPD has not named the man, which is normal at this stage. It has not said whether he has appeared in court, whether he has legal representation, or what the Sophiatown case number is. It has not said whether the firearm has been sent for ballistic testing, whether it was linked to any other incident, or whether the man was known to police before this arrest. It has not said whether anyone else was in the car with him or waiting nearby, and it has not said whether the Jetour T2 was damaged.

Those are the questions a reader in Langlaagte, or anyone who drives Main Reef, will want answered, because a firearm at a hijacking attempt is a different order of danger from a hijacking attempt alone. A driver who gives up the car walks away. A driver who does not, at a corner where a weapon is in play, is taking a chance that is not evenly distributed.

The JMPD has also not said what its Region F1 operations officers were doing at that intersection at that moment. Whether the arrest came from a routine patrol that happened to be there, or from a deployment aimed at hijacking hot spots, changes what the arrest means for the rest of the city. If it was routine, the lesson is that a visible officer at a red light can end an attempt. If it was targeted, the lesson is that the targeting worked on this corner and the question is which corner is next.

What is on the record is narrow and complete. One man. One intersection. One failed attempt on a black Jetour T2. One unlicensed firearm count. One detention at Sophiatown SAPS. The JMPD posted a photograph with the announcement and did not, in the text of the post, describe what the photograph shows.

The Enquirer has put the outstanding questions to the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department and to Sophiatown SAPS: the court date, the status of the firearm, and whether the arrest came from a standing deployment in Region F1. This article will be updated with their answers.