The balloon the little girl had been playing with in the shopping trolley was still moving.
That was how a Bloemendal couple could tell their daughter was not far away.
It was while Monre Schutte, 28, and his girlfriend, Lee-Anthea Claassen, 23, were in a frozen foods section of the Boxer store in Cleary Park that their one-year-old child was snatched from their trolley.
They had turned their back for a split second to select frozen chicken, but when they looked again, she was gone.
With no time to lose, Schutte alerted security and soon found his daughter in the arms of a stranger.
Claassen had only managed to pick up yoghurts for her baby girl and moved to the poultry fridge when she called Schutte over to help her choose the right packet.
“When I turned around and noticed the child wasn’t in the trolley, I asked Lee-Anthea where she was and she also didn’t know,” Schutte said.
“I quickly noticed that her balloon was still moving in the trolley and guessed whoever took her must still be in the shop.
“So I rushed to the security guard to tell him so he could block the entrance.”
During his interaction with the guard, Schutte said, a woman he had never met kept calling out to him.
He did not give her his full attention because she was not carrying a child.
“I asked Lee-Anthea to stand by the door while I went to the lady,” he said.
“The lady pointed to another one [woman] who was carrying our child and said they were just pranking us.
“I asked her how they could joke about something like this.
“I took the child and I just cried.”
Both Claassen and Schutte said they had never met the women before Monday’s incident.
“When I asked the lady who was carrying the child how she can joke about something like this, she said her intention was to take the child to the store’s management and then they left,” Claassen said.
“We were still in shock at the time and didn’t know what to do.”
The family left the store and returned later to ask security for CCTV footage.
They were contacted by security at the shop on Tuesday and told the women had returned to the centre.
They had seen the footage of the incident circulated on social media.
In the video, the first woman is seen touching the baby girl and passing by while the second woman follows behind her.
The second woman is seen picking up the baby from the trolley and walking away with her.
Schutte is seen holding the trolley while facing the fridge.
The couple reported the incident to the police on Tuesday and the women were later arrested.
Police spokesperson Colonel Priscilla Naidu said on Wednesday that the women were still in custody but had not yet been charged.
An investigation is still under way.
Claassen said she was angered by the women’s unapologetic attitude.
“We’re just never going to take her [daughter] with us when we go shopping again,” she said.
“I would have let this go if they had just apologised for what they did, but it was a laughing matter for them even after they saw we were shaken by it.
“Even on Tuesday when they returned to the centre they were still laughing,” Claassen said.
In a similar incident in Gauteng in August, a Meyersdal SuperSPAR employee was charged with attempted kidnapping after he was captured on video picking up a customer’s baby and walking off with her.
The man, Mduduzi Godfrey Thobela, appeared in court on August 23.
He was released on bail and is due back in court on September 15.
According to the latest crime statistics released by the SA Police Service, reported kidnapping cases increased nearly 60% across the country over the first quarter of the 2022/2023 financial year.
In April, May and June 2022, a total of 3,550 kidnappings were reported to the police — 1,318 more cases than the same period last year.
In the Eastern Cape, kidnapping cases have increased over the past financial year.
In the second quarter of the 2021/2022 financial year, 130 cases were reported.
This increased to 150 cases in the third quarter and 171 in the fourth quarter.
The latest figures, for the first quarter of the 2022/2023 financial year, show 174 kidnappings were reported to the police across the province.
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