A THUG learned the hard way that crime does not pay.
He was given a tough lesson by angry shoppers in the Pretoria CBD after he was caught trying to rob an old woman on Saturday.
He was punched, kicked and beaten with a beer bottle on the head.
Luckily for him, the police responded quickly and saved his life.
According to one of the thug’s victims, he was robbed of R3 500 about a month ago.
“I was coming from the bank when two men attacked me and grabbed my cash.
“I was going to buy clothes for my wife and son with the money.
“Everything happened quickly but I managed to see the face of one of the men.
“I decided I would hunt him down and make him pay for what he did to me.”
As luck would have it, he realised that it was the same thug he was looking for when the woman screamed for help on Saturday.
“He was with another man. I chased them with other shoppers from the corner of Pretorius and Thabo Sehume streets.
“We caught one of them between Shoprite and Jet in Church Street. The other thug managed to get away.”
He said he learned from street vendors that the thug who was moered and his three friends operate in the CBD.
When the SunTeam arrived, the man was sitting on the ground in torn clothes.
He was bleeding from the beating he was given by the furious crowd.
The woman who was nearly robbed thanked the shoppers for saving her.
“I had just withdrawn money from the bank.
“If it was not for the good Samaritans, I would have lost it all,” she said.
No one opened a case against the bleeding thug but the police took him away.
