Lynn Peters of Johannesburg, South Africa, sent out a Tweet that her boyfriend had been kidnapped Sunday night. He was put in the trunk of his own car by armed carjackers! However, the unnamed man was able to contact Peters via phone. Her alert sent the Twittersphere into action.
RT they did, including Peters' friend, Tanisha Reddy. From her it was picked up by well-known SA Twitterer, @pigspotter, who retweeted it to his 100,000-plus followers. @pigspotter specializes in identifying and sharing the location of police roadblocks. The police forces in South Africa have frequently been accused of graft and violence, so it does not seem to be criminals alone who make a point of avoiding roadblocks.
Because @pigspotter's followers include a large number of private security forces, whose vehicles are spread around the country, the Golf was located. Units were notified and in many cases sent out, each team and company retweeted the specifics of their search and kept each other apprised and informed on Twitter.
@afritrack asked if the car was equipped with electronic tracking (it was not.) A volunteer security group called Riga Rescue offered to track the victim's cell signal. The security company K9 Security eventually visually identified the car. The kidnappers were ultimately stopped at a police road block in Ventersberg, 150 miles from where he was taken.
The victim was rescued unharmed. The perpetrators fled on foot, and have not yet been apprehended. Link -via Gizmodo