Reckless driving triggered road rage

JANA-MARI SMITH



The rage witnessed by thousands of Facebook users earlier this week, when a man rammed his bakkie into a sedan at the Wika Service Station in Windhoek, was sparked by a half-full Coke bottle that had hit the driver’s head a few minutes earlier.

Faizel Nickel, the driver of the bakkie, yesterday said while many have judged the actions they saw on the video clip, the story of what led him to lose his temper in an uncharacteristic way has not been told yet.

“I came to the point where I completely lost my temper, when he threw the bottle at my head. I am not that man everyone has seen in the video.

“But I didn’t expect that bottle. That was too much for me, especially after he had already threatened us after we asked him to drive better and stop endangering others on the road,” he said.

Nickel said he was angered by the reckless driving of Christoph Itana, the driver of the white Corolla, and the bottle Itana threw at him. He said the incident was not a racist incident.

He added that following his description as a “white dude” on social media, he wanted to put the record straight. “I am not a white man. I am a Baster. But I have been treated worse than a pig,” he said.

Itana yesterday denied that he had thrown a bottle at Nickel, or that he had driven recklessly. Instead, he claimed Nickel bullied him on the road after he had asked if he could squeeze into his lane.

The police yesterday confirmed that Itana had approached the police and asked to settle the matter with Nickel out of court. They agreed that Nickel to pay N$58 000 for the damage to Itana’s car in exchange for all charges being dropped.

Itana told Namibian Sun that he opted for that arrangement as he wanted to avoid a drawn-out court case and instead wanted to get on with his life.

“That money, that is our livelihood, we are unemployed now,” he told Namibian Sun yesterday.

Nickel dismissed police statements that he was arrested at his home in Khomasdal on Tuesday night, and said he had in fact surrendered to the police on Tuesday evening, on his second attempt to do so that day.

He claimed that he had driven directly to a police station that afternoon following the incident captured on the CCTV footage. However, the first time the queues were long and he had to return to work.

When he returned to the police station later that day, the video had gone viral on social media and he was arrested upon arriving at the police station.

Yesterday, Nickel said the incident has led to various death threats against him, many based on the Facebook post accompanying the video, in which it was alleged that Nickel’s wife had shouted racial obscenities at Itana after her husband had crashed into his car.

Nickel said the accusations were false, and that she had in fact shouted “See what you have done now”, a reference to Nickel’s claim that Itana had taunted them with his reckless driving.

Nickel claimed he confronted Itana at the traffic lights after Itana had changed lanes without warning, cutting them off. When they realised his car had no number plate, they confronted him at the next traffic stop.

“He then began shouting at me and he started deliberately driving very close to our car, pushing into the lane ahead of us at close distances,” Nickel claimed. He claimed Itana came so close to their bakkie that it looked as if he wanted to crash into them.

Itana dismissed all these allegations.

“I then told him at the next stop that we should go to the police station to sort this situation out. He shouted even louder at us this time, and he threatened to shoot us,” Nickel alleged.

He said that his wife persuaded him to ignore Itana and to head in a different direction, which he did.

However, a short while later, at the Puma service station, Itana’s car again approached them and he allegedly threw a Coke bottle through Nickel’s window.

“That is when I lost my temper completely and chased after him,” Nickel said.

When they arrived at the Wika Service Station, Nickel says he accidentally crashed into the side of Itana’s car because he was unable to stop in time.

“I then saw he tried to fetch something out of the car and I thought maybe it’s a gun, because he had threatened us earlier. My wife then wanted to get out of the car to see what the damage to the vehicle was, but at that time I started to reverse quickly, and hit the car again.”

Itana admitted that he had grabbed a screwdriver, which he said he wanted to throw at the bakkie.