{"id":47707,"date":"2026-07-08T14:55:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T12:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/accidents\/police-are-investigating-the-possible-staged-kidnapping-involving-a-professional-soccer-player\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T14:55:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T12:55:49","slug":"police-are-investigating-the-possible-staged-kidnapping-involving-a-professional-soccer-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/accidents\/police-are-investigating-the-possible-staged-kidnapping-involving-a-professional-soccer-player\/","title":{"rendered":"Police are investigating the possible staged kidnapping involving a professional soccer player"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Police in Mpumalanga are investigating a possible staged kidnapping involving a 27-year-old professional soccer player. The news of the soccer player&#039;s disappearance was brought to the Police&#039;s attention by his family. When his family reported him as missing, his next of kin indicated that he was kidnapped, and currently it is said that he returned home seven days later, unharmed.<\/p>\n<p>The Police investigation suggests that the soccer player might have faked his own kidnapping. It is further alleged that the player&#039;s family received a call from an unknown person using the player&rsquo;s phone. The caller claimed that the said player had been kidnapped and demanded a ransom for his release. Concerned about his safety, the player&#039;s family went to Witbank<\/p>\n<p>Police Station on Sunday, 05 July 2026, and then opened a case of kidnapping for ransom. The Police immediately deployed Detectives as well as resources to investigate and locate the alleged victim. Later that same afternoon,&#8230;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/news.aspx?s=1&#038;i=77901&#038;page=police-are-investigating-the-possible-staged-kidnapping-involving-a-professional-soccer-player\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on Arrive Alive <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Police in Mpumalanga are investigating a possible staged kidnapping involving a 27-year-old professional soccer player. The news of the soccer player&#039;s disappearance was brought to the Police&#039;s attention by his family. When his family reported him as missing, his next of kin indicated that he was kidnapped, and currently it is said that he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/police%20badge.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2149],"tags":[313],"class_list":["post-47707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-accidents","tag-mpumalanga"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.arrivealive.co.za\/\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/police%20badge.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}