Latest Footage & Interview with Leo Prinsloo

right uh we are sitting down today with the man of the moment uh dear princely himself you welcome here thank you very much we've decided to have this talk um regarding this incident that has now gone viral all over the world uh just to shed some light on it and get leo's perspective on this and obviously get the correct message out there the one without the sensation the one without all the tails the one from without all the keyboard barriers and hear from the man himself what went down that day and also a bit more behind this so let's say something like leo unplugged so leo your version what would be your opening statement what would you like to say to start this this conversation thanks down for the opportunity you know this thing has been really crazy it's something that we never anticipated to happen if everything went right it shouldn't have happened the video shouldn't have came out in the first place but now i did and it's all over everybody you know all over makes me together it's been an on and off thing for me to do that type of operational deployment i'm more in the training line of things but from time to time i do it the real heroes out there is the is the brave warriors of caching transit companies on triaction policeman that that runs to these type of situations on a daily basis um you know they fight one day next day they need to go back and those are the real heroes in the the biggest scheme of things my situation um maybe highlighted the the issue and the you know the crime pattern and problems that we are facing in south africa and maybe it's an opportunity to highlight it to the world and to people that's not familiar with what is happening but myself and lloyd did what we had to do we were tossed to you know escort that valuable asset career vehicle and like many other companies and cit robberies and cit protection teams they get under fire it happens weekly almost daily there is battles being fought on the streets of south africa where hundreds of rounds are being fired in a single incident and you can't you can't refer to it as an incident it's a war you know if you if there's 250 to 300 rounds being fired per robbery it's not an incident it's downright a war zone and sometimes it there's two good guys versus 20 30 bad guys sometimes they they they manage to use to survive sometimes they don't a couple of weeks ago a week after my incident there was another guy did the same same task he was unfortunately he was killed but then you know the unfortunate thing is that doesn't reach the media and that's the sad part that that's from this whole incident you know they there's a big hype about one incident and all the others just go by the wayside and never never gets out there and people think this is an isolated incident which it's absolutely not to me that's that's the that's one of the things that i found all these news agencies we've been talking to over this past week everybody asked me this one question how often does this happen in south africa and i don't think that the public actually realizes the gravity of the situation that value they don't realize what you just said the war that we're fighting um they don't understand how often these things actually happen um the scary part for me is that this the most a lot of south african people don't get this they were like what the hell is going on um is this really happening yeah no not true you see the thing is we are i think we've become so desensitized with crime in general um you know if it's not cash in trance it's a hijacking it's not hijacking it is um business robberies house invasions rape murder of all kinds of things like that i think south africans have been bombarded so much with with the bad stuff in the in the last couple of years that we try to you know just put it under under a blanket and not not face the reality but these kinds of things happens literally on a daily basis between my incident and as we sit here today i know about six robberies that take place or took place and we where people get injured wounded killed so it's it's a severe problem out there which needs to be needs to be addressed not only for the for the security but um you know people themselves but public in general yeah because it it affects absolutely everybody i think there's the key it affects everybody so we'll get to that in a bit i think uh if you wouldn't mind describing in your own words what went down on that day on the video okay so you know it turned out to be a normal day [Music] we we started escorting the vehicle ending up on the highways as normally one try to keep a very good observation around the vehicle as far as you can as best as you can i thought i i could i would be able to spot them before they knock us but unfortunately the first moment that i knew they were they was when the shots hit struck the vehicle the one vehicle came past us um before the shots were being fired because they use usually two or three vehicles or more in certain cases one vehicle is dedicated to the curry van and then there's one or two vehicles dedicated to the escort vehicle because they know that if they take out the escort um vehicle and you know the security of the merchandise you know the stealing of the you know the robbery of the merchandise is um you know it's easy easy target so the bucky got past us and the next thing i heard was the gunshots i had a look in my mirror i saw where they were they were on my four or five o'clock area i swift into them and one needs to understand these guys didn't wake up that morning and decided to do a robbery these guys are organized they've got training um they are like we all know they are either current or ex police military or security personnel they are trained they have got contacts they know what they are doing military precision is evident on a lot of these incidents so i tried to to bump them off the road they managed to i managed to muslim first time then i saw the bucky pushed the courier van off then i went over um went for them trying to get them away from the career man as i drove past them the the bucket took off i tried to ram him off and he just disappeared the other vehicle came from behind again i tried to to block him he came past me i tried to to to ram him again unfortunately those vehicles are quite um you know powerful and fast so he got past me before i could give him a proper proper push once he went past me i turned around to go back to the crew vehicle to see where their crew was i knew they were out of the bucky they ran down the highway but at that stage there was three armed robbers with a case on the on the highway so i went back to the crew van as i got to it and i looked back the audi turned around and he parked and broadsided into the into the highway and his troop came out they formed an extended line and they started shooting us at us again so i went for them again with my vehicle and you know i know some of the questions was why didn't we shoot back and all of that that particular vehicle didn't had any gun ports in the doors with windows so that wasn't a great option i had i would have had to open the door to engage him with a rifle at that stage my vehicle was my weapon and my my cover so that was my first option to use until it's exhausted until the vehicle has been shot out or disabled completely then my follow-up you know actions would have changed but at that stage that that was my first option and that's what we that's what we used so um i went after the audio game at that stage there was six on me on the on the highway i tried to chase the audio down he went into um you know entrance of a hotel close by i pushed him around he went over there over those concrete balls he got stuck i tried to get get over the concrete balls to get close to him and i got stuck and unfortunately that's where the whole thing ended so that's that's how that incident happened the severity of the gunshots or you know the accuracy of the gunshots is evident that it was not a first-time robber or a un trained person behind those aks and other weapons that they've used you can see they were well well prepared the motors of burundi is is what they normally use we know that and that was my my my go-to my go-to plan the only thing you can really do in a situation like that is try to pre-visualize what you're going to do there's unfortunately no ways that any person any training provider can can train you specifically in a real life scenario like that to do so in my mind i knew my weapon was my vehicle and that is how i was going to utilize it and i kept on pre-visualizing what i will do and luckily um that kicked in it was a instinctive action in a situation like that one cannot formulate plans once the shots is incoming and once the once everything starts happening then you are a lot of your actions is based on instinctive actions and those instinctive actions are based from previous experience um training and you know concepts what we call muscle memory that needs to be built and all of that starts in your mind you need to have a you need to have a strong mind you need to have a clear mind as to what your weapons are you need to be instinctively familiar with your tools and systems that you has to your availability let's talk about some of the talking points out there um the first one being okay you covered why didn't you shoot back because that's one of the issues that i see all over why didn't they shoot back okay so that's what we've covered the next one uh what could lloyd have done any differently how's the gun better yeah look yeah whenever you see you know all these incidents you know and with cctv footages and cameras all over the world we see them more and more and dash cams of police vehicles shopping centers and things like that and every second omg critic and keyboard warrior has got his own version of what he would have would have done we take it from where it comes we just laugh and laugh at them know the some of the comments are really funny actually um but you know those people that has got lots of critics um criticism against lloyd you know they must get up put the sugar-free soft drink down put the bucket of popcorn down get up from behind this screen or the tv where they've watched the 100th action movie put on the bulletproof put on your boots get into the car with us in that confined space you know and maybe when you're lucky because you know you are bound to be lucky sometimes you know bullets will be incoming and let's see what you are made of really because hindsight is a wonderful thing and in hindsight i could have done much better i could have done certain things better but in the moment things happens in the moment and you need to live in that moment that you need to react in the moment so um yeah lloyd did a good job he did what he was asked to do i asked you to phone robbie and joss by name they are very famous now unfortunately there was scramblers and cellphone scramblers and blockers and all those type of things and that's those type of equipment is available to the to the bad guys so he couldn't make the call what else should he have done you know like you said must should he have hold the gun better there was not an opportunity for him to get out run shoot or do anything the best thing he could do was stay calm which he did brilliantly he didn't freak out and be a bigger bigger burden on me trying to keep the con in its wheels so you know for a guy that worked fourth day in the company on the fourth day or first week in the company fourth day in a gun battle he did exceptionally well as often i think so too okay another question that came up was why use the cell phone why not use radios i'm getting quotes for radios from all over the world you know the there's a place for radios in in a lot of circumstances or incidents and work work environments in this case it wouldn't have helped us because the we all alone we didn't have a backup if you have backup in close proximity radios is absolutely the thing to have um robin joss was in that area but not in radio contact or in reach of radio contact and so making a call on a cell phone would have been the better option we know that we are alone in a situation you know if there is a good marathon maybe of another company or you know just happens to drive pulse or a policeman or whoever who's willing to assist you know that's an absolute bonus usually these um robbers you know they are so brazen that they don't care about you know backup anyway they will also get get engaged so question of radios um radios in this instance wouldn't have assisted us in any way to call for backup because backup was only 30 minutes away from the closest you know point yeah okay so i think let's move on to the next part of this um training okay so one of the solutions that we've talked about previously is training so let's look at let's say industry specific training what what is available there what what do you what is your suggestions around training what causes are they and so on and so forth look i'm i'm a trainer about um that's my passion so training is the only thing that an operator has got to fall back on in an incident like that um the better the training the better chance he has got the people normally there's a misconception you know they they've got a firearm with him he's got an old vehicle where he's got a ifak you know medical kit on him and he thinks he's he's really back on the job and multiple attackers and you know manage the situation and many times they fail because again one of the big misconceptions is that in the industry for a civilian and or security officer there's a process that he needs to go through to obtain a competency certificate from the sa police and many times i think that having by having that certificate in his hands it makes him capable of managing the situation that whole process is is wrongly named it should have been a compliance process instead of a competency process because it makes you compliant with the law but not yet competent or not necessarily competent competency comes over a period of time multiple times on the range or in training and i think that's where lots of people the security industry as well they are being regulated by by psyra by the police and there's regulations that they need to adhere to unfortunately there's companies out there that literally throws the people to the wolves um you know they appoint them with a bare minimum of qualifications knowing that you know the the the the environment that they're going to work in is so dangerous that because they uh chases you know money and profit the the guy that he sends out into those jobs is just a collateral damage almost trying to say and that's that's a big big issue i've been in the industry for many many years i've seen the the level of training and the level of ability of of armed security officers from all in every field to be these cash introduced armed reaction and i'm very sad to say that the the quality and the ability out there does not stand up to the to the dangers they are facing the problem is now that the outcome of a situation like that is based on luck the the operator is just lucky that he hasn't been killed and that is just not good a good place to be the industry needs to realize that the better trained officer you get the better jobs you will get now they then the guy on the street will sell himself or sell the company he needs to look the part and he needs to be the part at the end of the day you know you can i've seen companies that really doesn't care they've seen they they um send the guy maybe once a year for a qualifying shoot or what we call a regulation 21 assessment which is not even closely enough to get the guy where he needs to be to be able to manage himself but when it comes to bottom line margins they they do not want to spend money on their personnel you know that goes for apart from training you know it goes to equipment and everything that goes with it but when it comes to specific training the people needs to to be able to have the confidence to go out there and know whatever comes this way you will be able to to be able to manage too many times i get onto the range and i ask them if you look at an incident like that are you how many how much confidence have you got to to manage that and sadly almost 90 plus of them recognizes the fact that they do not have what it takes to to do that so to them it's a job he needs to earn an income and knowingly going into a potential gunfight every single day and still do it still put on the bulletproof day after day um you know it's just amazing but you know desperateness and you know financial tough times cause schools for desperate measures at the end of the day yeah but i think definitely security companies need to start investing in their people and need to start up screening them because well we are faced with uh with the with the growing threat as you said previously these guys are trained these guys come with intent and just to just to put that into perspective people would ask me but why cell phones it is it's an easy it's easy maths you know you steal 100 cell phones with 10 000 rank each okay do that four times a week do that four weeks a month crime actually pays in south africa that's the issue grant pays in south africa and he buys guns and he buys drugs and he buys cars and he buys all these other kinds of things and then in the industry we sit with that so i think this message we need to get clear we need to make this this must be very clear that security companies need to invest in training in their personnel um as a kickoff because they'll be able to to to deliver a better service and so on and so forth so on that point what type of training is available from you guys for the industry so we provide a wide variety of training you know firearm training entails a wide a wide array of courses when we start training anybody we need to start at the basics we need to form a foundation that forms the base of of anything he does with a firearm in his hand too many people out there think you know he he watches one or two action movies and he can perform those same actions it's very difficult to hit the target you know standing still it's much difficult or um much more difficult to eat it when when you're on the streets these moving targets there's multiple targets and these incoming bullets that changes the picture dramatically so we do firearm training from a basic level to advanced tactical level in all types of firearms these we try to get the people's mindset ready because like i said you know that's that's what you've got you've got a mindset you've got a a strong strong internal belief in yourself and then you need to take that over into your physical actions so we work on the mindset we work on the physical and operational skills and that's just on firearms then in my case you need to be able to manage your vehicle in many cases in many instances the vehicle is the primary weapon for the for a period of time until it gets shot out which happens in a lot of the cases and then you need to revert back to plan b and c and so forth as the environment changes because every kind fight is an extremely dynamic situation and it changes very rapidly and you need to be able to keep up with that changes very quickly so you need to be able to manage your vehicle you need to know the ability of your vehicle what you can do with your vehicle not to to throw it over and then you put yourself back in the in the in the gunfight so to speak if you get hurt you need to be able to apply medical assistance either to yourself or to your to your crew or to some other people so we do that meet courses we teach the people how to self help himself stop the bleed all those type of things and to assist with immediate trauma wounds at a basic level basically so um we do cpo courses you know close protection offices because they are just the same you know the target is just different their target is a human other people target is the cash or the the client is cash or cell phones or whatever the case might be but the attack is is basically the same so they need to have to be able to adapt to their their working environment and so does the caching transit operator needs to work in his environment and everybody out there that's in this type of work function needs to be able to apply his mind effectively in his in his operational capacity so we we do all those type of courses there's other companies that does it as well the thing is companies and i've worked for some some companies that i found they they just want to adhere to the basic minimum training standard that's been set out and and that is just absolutely not enough to qualify the people for what they need to do i think on that point what is important to us that's what this is my take on it is that many people will send either civilians will come on one course or a company will send the staff on one course and then they'll be oh wow we learned this but what people must understand is that the threat in south africa is an ongoing threat and as the time passes the threat is growing and it's increasing and it's becoming worse so as the criminals become wise uh just so the rest of us need to and i i'm a very pro advocate for continuous training for coming back and doing the next level and the next the next level and the next level yeah continuous training is a is an absolute must do whether it's for the security industry for civilians there's no way that you can have a one-day training session and it's going to be for life for any any incident like this or even remotely like this to build up a muscle memory there needs to be time spent on the range you need to adopt a mindset and the lifestyle of incorporating all these tactics and techniques and so forth into your system so that the execution of those tactics and skills and all that you've gained from training needs to be instinctively applied because there's a concept that we call the body alarm reaction and a lot of things happens to your mind and your body during a situation like that and your rational thought process is very severely hampered your hearing goes go south you get tunnel vision all of those things is required to do to be effective but it gets severely hampered during a stressful situation and the only thing that you can really do to do to give yourself a fighting chance so to speak is to to train to repeat train and repeat and to get to all those actions as an absolute muscle memory to get your correct instinctive actions just like like a heartbeat a once-off training is all good and well we see it a lot unfortunately people are very excited after a basic shoot sometimes and you know they will see us again and again and again but there's a very s very small percentage of people that comes back for continuous training and then someone on our basic shoots you will see old shooters that comes they are very good shooters and they will come for a basic shoot because they know and understand what it what it requires you need to have a basic foundation and upon that you build up all your your special skills if you want to call it that um but continuous training is if you if you value your life and if you value your ability to do to make a stand and you know to protect your family to protect your crew whatever then continuous training is an absolute must okay so uh i think we've heard the story now um and i just want to sort of emphasize the importance of training for both the security industry farmers uh community policing and normal civilians out there if by now you don't get the surveillance of what's actually happening out there the reality of crime in south africa then you're most probably not watching anything out on social media or news at all so you've heard how important training is you've heard how important continuous training is and obviously you should now begin to understand how important the correct training is so it's important to get in touch with us so that we can you know tell you more about the courses and the specific courses keeping in mind that we do tailor my courses we do client-specific courses as leo have mentioned the cpo courses advanced driving courses there's the long loan operator course running over a 12 month period there's the basic shoots the competency shoots the sniper courses and so on and so forth keeping keep an eye on the pages we'll have the links on the video we'll have the links i'm not sure if you'll have it on the top here on the bottom on the site we can just have a look in the descriptions and wherever and keep following us for news on that so leo i just want to thank you for your time and hopefully we got the message out now and we can carry on with life as it is nice from you uh thanks john for the opportunity yes from my side um yeah that's what we do we try to to give a person a fighting chance out there um you know i've been overwhelmed with support from all kinds of social media platforms it's really been a humbling time in my life we from across the world people has contacted us um sending us well wishes and all of that we cannot it's impossible for us to to to answer everything and every single one of them to everybody out there thanks a lot it really means a lot to us [Music] and you know stay safe watch your seats and yeah look after yourselves all the city guys this one's for you you

Channel: fortisvids

Views: 923,931

Rating: 4.9555106 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 7mZ9hDmmOsA

Length: 34min 38sec (2078 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Fudzy]

Thought I'd share as I hadn't seen the rear view dash cam footage and the longer version of the front mounted one.

[u/Druyx]

Good on him for pointing out how many other guys do this for a living and that it happens on weekly basis.