A stampede broke out on Monday 14 April as residents battled to get their hands on an early Easter present when a meat truck overturned on Dr Jacob Zuma drive.
A stampede broke out on Monday 14 April as residents battled to get their hands on an early Easter present when a meat truck overturned on Dr Jacob Zuma drive.
A refrigerator truck carrying a huge load of meat had crashed into four cars before overturning, bringing traffic to a standstill.
What was a normal Monday afternoon soon turned into a chaotic scuffle between police officers and township residents.
Within minutes of the crash, hundreds of people forced their way past pepper-spraying police officers, creating a frenzy.
According to Grahamstown police spokesperson Captain Mali Govender, the truck was coming from the direction of Joza when it collided with four cars, two of which were being washed on the side of the busy road.
The driver and his two assistants were injured during the accident and taken to hospital.
The driver, who suffered serious injuries, spent three days in hospital.
Police officials and Hi-Tec officers, among the first to arrive at the scene, battled the crowd for over an hour in an effort to salvage some of the meat.
The officials used pepper spray to keep the uncontrollable crowd at bay, forming a line of defence in front of the open truck.
But they were outnumbered by the persistent crowd and eventually overpowered.
The truck was on its way to deliver meat to a number of Grahamstown businesses, including Tip Top, Connocks and the Bathurst butchery.
Tip Top butchery owner Diane Coetzee said the crowd chased away the driver of the truck and his two assistants with knives and axes, before ripping the truck open and helping themselves to the meat.
"It is a tragic situation that people take advantage of a situation like that and step over injured people to take something that doesn't belong to them," Coetzee said.
She said her business had ordered at least R80 000 worth of meat to fill orders for the Easter weekend.
"The truck owners called us around four o'clock in the afternoon, asking us to go to the scene and retrieve as much meat as we can," she said. "But when we got there it was chaotic, we couldn't get anything."
Bongani Ndyawe and his brother were inside their house when the truck rammed into both their cars, a Mazda 3 and an Astra.
Govender said police are investigating a case of reckless and negligent driving but the details of the accident were still unclear by late on Wednesday 16 April.
