South African thugs throw woman from 200-foot bridge

A South African woman had a 'miraculous' escape after surviving being thrown off a 200-foot-high bridge by thugs who hijacked her car, in a crime brutal even by the country's standards.

Kavisha Seevnarain, 26, suffered seven broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and lower spine injuries in the fall. A student teacher, she had been driving to a friend's house in Durban in her Mercedes when armed men leapt out of a car behind her at an intersection, smashed her window and dragged her out of the vehicle.

She was driven around for hours, with some of the robbers following in her own car. She was forced to stop at several cash machines to withdraw money and at township bars, until around 2am when the vehicles stopped on a bridge where the N2 motorway crosses a river at Umkomaas, north of the city.

She was dragged to the parapet and thrown over the edge, landing in just a few inches of water. Despite her injuries, she was able to crawl to a sandbank where her cries eventually attracted a walker's attention.

"It is miraculous," her brother Kavesh, a doctor, said. "Landing in shallow water and surviving is one thing, but even then she would have drowned if she had lost consciousness. And if the tide had not been out, she would have been swept away."

Her father Jeewan, a deputy school principal, added: "It's a miracle that she has survived and sustained such injuries that can be classified as minor compared to all that she had. What we are upset about is that people have no respect and regard for life and for the living." Four men are being sought in connection with hijacking and attempted murder.