LUCKY TWIST OF FATE
Unexpected heroes tell of girl’s midnight rescue
● When Amy’Leigh de Jager was safely in the arms of her father, Wynand, her unwitting saviour, Hendrik Breedt, asked the sixyear-old never to forget him.
“I said that because I will never forget her. I thank God that He put us there so we could find her,” he said.
Breedt, 25, and his girlfriend, Savannah Kriel, 22, were walking home from a bar in the early hours of Tuesday morning when Amy’Leigh’s screams for her mother cut through the night. Wrapping her in his jacket, Breedt held Amy’Leigh in his arms while they walked about 3km to the Vanderbijlpark police station, bringing her 19-hour hostage drama to an end.
The girl was wrenched from her mother’s arms by a gang of masked men as they walked towards the Laerskool Kollegepark gate on Monday morning.
The snatching, alleged to have been orchestrated by a teacher at the school who was the former best friend of Amy’Leigh’s mother, Angeline, sparked a province-wide manhunt.
The kidnappers demanded a R2m ransom for her safe return but their plot quickly unravelled and they eventually dropped their demand to R6,000. With the police dragnet closing in, the gang dumped the girl on the side of the road at about 2am on Tuesday.
As Breedt and Kriel ambled towards their home, they happened upon Amy’Leigh, something they believe was an act of fate.
“I was fixing a gate in the morning and I turned the radio on and started hearing about this little girl who was missing and I listened to that all day. It was just around the corner and it was so sad,” he said.
The thought of Amy’Leigh had faded from their minds as the pair went to a family braai and rounded out the evening with drinks at the Infinity Bar in Vanderbijlpark.
“We were walking towards our house, I saw a figure of a child in the dark,” he said.
At that moment a minibus taxi rumbled past and Amy’Leigh ran into the road.
“She started screaming ‘Mama’ like she was hurt, and I ran to go see what was wrong. I freaked when I heard her yell, it was so frantic and it sounded like a child was being attacked,” Breedt said.
Kriel called out to the girl and when Amy’Leigh heard a woman’s voice she ran towards them, with Breedt scooping her up into his arms. “I asked her where she was from. She said: ‘Hulle het my vanoggend by my mamma gesteel by Kollegepark [They stole me from my mom this morning at Kollegepark].’”
Breedt said: “In that moment I knew it was Amy’Leigh. I cried when I realised it was her. We both did. We were overwhelmed.”
The couple said Amy’Leigh could remember her house number but not the name of the street. “We thought the police would know what to do … so we just walked there with her. It was scary because we didn’t know if they [her captors] were going to come back, so every car that passed made us nervous,” Kriel said.
As they walked, Amy’Leigh regaled the couple with stories of her cat, how she’d made a bird feeder as a class project and how she’d borrowed a bracelet from her best friend. The couple almost collided with Wynand and Angeline as they entered the police station, with Wynand rushing at
I asked her where she was from... She said: ‘They stole me from my mom’ R4 Savannah Kriel handed Amy’Leigh her last coins in the hope it would reassure the little girl 3km The distance they walked to the Vanderbijlpark police station
Breedt and his daughter.
“He ran and grabbed the girl. I didn’t know what to do because he is so big and I thought he was going to hit me. His first words to her were: ‘My poppie [My doll],’” Breedt said.
After her safe return, detectives quizzed the pair, cautious to rule out their involvement in the abduction.
Under questioning, the unemployed Breedt missed a scheduled interview at a factory in Vanderbijlpark. “Maybe I’ll still be able to go back and try again, but I wouldn’t trade what happened for anything. I think, looking back now, we saved her,” he said.
A source close to the family, who would not be named, said they were “eternally grateful” to the couple. Police spokesperson Brig Vish Naidoo also praised the pair. “Without them she might have fallen into the hands of dangerous people,” he said.