Three trucks were looted and torched during a violent protest by Balmoral informal settlement residents on Tuesday night.
The protesters started burning tyres on Wit Deep Road next to the squatter camp prompting SAPS and EMPD to respond.
When the cops arrived to monitor the situation they were greeted with gunfire from within the protesting mob.
While waiting for back-up, three passing trucks were forced to stop by the protestors and were looted and burnt.
Gunfire directed at the police continued thereby keeping them at bay as the looting progressed.
According to Fleetwatch, the drivers escaped uninjured.
When back-up from the Public Order Police eventually arrived, the teams where able to quell the violence and restore order.
The burning of the trucks is by no means related to the truck attacks that saw 35 trucks being burnt this past week.
A 45-year-old truck driver from Ixopo, was shot dead during the attacks in Gauteng.
This latest attack, however, was a local service delivery protest and the trucks were unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Looting is an unacceptable way of addressing one’s hunger, maybe. But how does burning trucks help anyone?
It somehow gives the public a hint of the thorny path truck drivers walk on to deliver goods to their favourite store next door. If he is not ducking bullets, the community he serves waits to ambush him, that’s if he survives fatigue which haunts them all the time.
Violent protestors shoot at cops, loot and burn 3 trucks in Boksburg | SA Trucker https://t.co/CotOPtNu2I pic.twitter.com/di3DMO5aTJ
— SA Trucker (@rsa_trucker) December 2, 2020
