A dramatic assassination attempt on a man sprayed with bullets by a machine gun hidden behind the rear license plate of a parked car yesterday was foiled by the target's bulletproof Mercedes.
In scenes which could have been taken straight from James Bond, the vehicle where the weapon was hidden burst into flames straight after opening fire on Radovan Krejcir, a Czech fugitive living in Johannesburg.
South African police say it was a possible attempt on the life of a man who has been linked to underworld figures in his adopted home.
Rodovan Krejcir stands in front of the stolen red VW Polo which had been modified with a dozen gun barrels to pepper him with bullets as he got into his car outside his gold and diamonds pawn shop in Johannesburg
But Mr Krejcir emerged unscathed from yesterday's dramatic episode, which left his own armoured vehicle peppered with impact marks and shocked observers of South Africa's criminal underworld.
Nevertheless, the fugitive seemed unperturbed. 'All my life is like James Bond stuff,' he said with a chuckle in an interview with Eyewitness News, a South African media outlet. 'That's how I live my life.'
The episode is the one of the most outlandish chapters yet in the long saga of the underworld in Johannesburg, where turf battles over drugs, fraud schemes and other spoils often turn deadly.
Lethal modifications to the empty parked car outside Mr Krejcir's gold and diamonds pawn shop evoked Goldfinger, the James Bond film in which OO7 drives an Aston Martin with gun barrels behind the front indicators.
Photographs of the stolen red VW Polo in Johannesburg show a dozen gun barrels, some of them melted or contorted by the fire that followed the shooting.
About 10 bullets hit the Mr Krejcir's driver-side window, but he was out of the vehicle at that point, talking on his phone.
No comments:
Post a Comment