A Johannesburg woman had her festive season ruined before it began when she was allegedly thrown from a moving vehicle after her phone was taken. The incident left her recovering in a wheelchair, while she accused her bank of secondary trauma due to the hoops she was forced to unsuccessfully jump through. Tens of thousands of rands were withdrawn from her bank account, but the bank is digging its heels in over possible protocol breaches.
Bianca, who asked that her surname be hidden as her assailants are still at large, was on a night out near Fourways in late November when she was searching for an e-hailing ride. Two men noticed she was struggling to find a driver and offered her a lift as they were headed in the same direction, which she reluctantly accepted. En route to another venue in Fourways, the men allegedly took the phone from Bianca, claiming they needed directions.
Shortly after, the men allegedly threw her from the vehicle near Winnie Mandela Drive, where she would lie on the side of the road for what she said felt like hours. In the early hours of the morning, a man on a motorbike stopped to assist and flagged down another motorist, with Bianca able to relay her father’s phone number to the Samaritans. Bianca was taken to a hospital near Edenvale, where a doctor’s report, shown toThe Citizen, shows she sustained a severe pelvic injury and was given Fentanyl and Ativan shortly before 3am.
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The medication reportedly sedated her to the point where she was unable to contact her bank for another day, and without her phone, she was unable to be notified of the activity on her bank account. Bianca would soon discover that her bank account was virtually empty after a series of transfers made from the code-protected banking app on her phone.
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