It started on Sunday evening when an unnamed man was robbed and shoved in the trunk of his car during a carjacking, a type of event which is apparently repeated more 10,00 times a year in South Africa. But this time the thieves had not taken away their victim’s cellphone.
So he texted his girlfriend Lynn Peters. Her response is reported by Ars Technica:
Peters immediately tweeted, “Be on the look for DSS041GP my boyufriend [sic] has just been hijacked and is in the boot please RT.”
RT they did, including Peters’ friend, Tanisha Reddy. From her it was picked up by well-known SA Twitterer, @pigspotter, who retweeted it to his 100,000-plus followers. @pigspotter specializes in identifying and sharing the location of police roadblocks. The police forces in South Africa have frequently been accused of graft and violence, so it does not seem to be criminals alone who make a point of avoiding roadblocks.
A number of @pigspotter’s followers are from private security companies. They became involved, retweeting details and tracking the victim’s cellphone signal until visual contact was made with the car.
It was stopped at a police roadblock 150 miles away from where the carjacking had taken place. The kidnappers escaped on foot, but the driver was rescued unhurt. Ars Technica concluded:
The incident was noteworthy for how fast information about it traveled, how many people responded and for the positive outcome. There was a palpable sense in the South African blogosphere of optimism and well-earned self-congratulation.
Story by Nick Clayton of the Wall Street Journal
