Leo Prinsloo
One of the first things you learn in a college 300-level International Relations course is that South Africa is a country that does not fuck around. It’s a place known for its Primary Exports of blood diamonds, organized crime, and videos of people being ripped to shreds by Great White Sharks, and when most people hear the words “South Africa” they pretty much just picture an Australian guy with less of that dorky charm and more of those friendship necklaces fashioned from human ears and the teeth of apex predators.
So, as you might imagine, the Gangs of South Africa have to be badass enough to deal with the fact that roughly two-thirds of the country’s population carries a twelve-inch Bowie knife to the fucking grocery store, because showing up with a switchblade and demanding your neighbors’ lunch money isn’t quite going to cut it when the guy you’re holding up has probably killed at least two wild animals with his bare hands.
Well, last month one of the more enterprising, organized, and badass of these borderline-militias tried to Dead Presidents a cash-in-transit Armored Car carrying nearly a hundred grand of high-tech merchandise, and they prepped for the mission like they’d rolled up Brad Pitt’s roles in Ocean’s Eleven with Brad Pitt’s role in Inglorious Basterds. They bribed cops and military guys for the travel route of the shipment, knew where it was going to be, and set up a coordinated ambush using three cars, a dozen guys packing full-auto assault rifles, and carrying everything from GPSes to signal scramblers designed to block outgoing cell transmissions and prevent the drivers from calling for backup. They were heavily-armed, well equipped, and ready to use lethal force to jack those Nokias.
What they weren’t expecting was that the guy driving that cash-in-transit truck was a 12-year Counter-Terrorism vet, chief instructor at a combat defense school and with a scrotum roughly comparable to the size of a moderately-priced personal watercraft:
And when 52 year-old Leo Prinsloo saw these guys rolling up on him with Kalashnikovs and nine-millies, he didn’t get scared.
He got pissed.
It was a little before 10:30am on April 22nd, 2021, when Leo Prinsloo’s life went viral. He and his partner, Lloyd Mtombemi, were driving down the N4 highway outside Pretoria in an armored Toyota Land Cruiser, hauling like a hundred grand worth of cell phones, when suddenly they got ambushed by a group of gangsters so hardcore, heavily-armed, and well-organized that they probably could take the Special Forces of many third-world countries in a best-of-seven live-action CounterStrike Tournament. One minute, everything was chill, just two cool dudes driving an ordinary-looking Toyota that just happened to have bulletproof glass and a couple crates of iPhone 12 Pro Max Mini XLs in the back, and the next minute they’re having a bad Sunday in Mogadishu.
With that distinctive pop pop that you’ve come to know from movies and video games that actually bother to get the sound of an AK-47 correct, spiderweb cracks sprayed across the driver side window just inches from Prinsloo’s head. From his side mirror, he saw a blacked-out Audi speeding up into his blind spot, a gunman firing his AK from the passenger window into traffic like a fucking lunatic. Even though the glass was bulletproof, they kept firing -- hoping maybe to break the glass, but, failing that, the shooter was also clever enough to know that he could shatter enough of the window to make it hard for Prinsloo to see what the hell was going on and possibly make it more likely that he’d fuck up and crash the Toyota.
Now, for most people, this is kind of where the story might end -- faced with a highly-organized, well-trained gang of professional killers, you’d see a lot of rent-a-cops either panic and crash, have a stroke, do something completely stupid and embarrasing, or just decide, “Yeah, ok, I’m not getting paid enough to catch a bullet for a goddamn Samsung that’s going to need to be upgraded in six months anyway and has a non-zero chance of catching fire and blowing a whole in my crotch at any given moment”. Not Leo Prinsloo. This guy is not only a combat veteran with decades of experience being shot at by jerkwads, but also a hard-as-fuck security professional with a chip on his shoulder who’s spent the greater part of this millenia fostering a seething unplacatable death-rage for the fucked-up gangs and murderous assholes who have been giving his country a bad rap and trying to kill him every time he drives below 120 kph on the highway. Prinsloo has spent countless hours training for this exact scenario, and his instincts kicked in pretty much immediately.
It turns out that Leo Prinsloo has spent over a decade working in the South African Police Service, where he attained the rank of Captain for the elite Special Task Force -- a domestic counter-terrorism unit that deals primarily with the protection of VIP targets, hostage rescue, and beating the shit out of anyone who looked at them funny. Think of them like the South African version of the British SAS, or like if everyone on the FBI Hostage Rescue Team shaved with a filed-down incisor they’d personally extracted from the jaws of a man-eating savannah Lion. During his career at STF, Leo Prinsloo came up as a sniper, survived a few gunfights (as you do), and was even part of the security detail that bodyguarded two U.S. Presidents, three Kardashians, Queen Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela, and probably a couple dozen other people you’d want to hang out with if they were drunk at a wedding reception. He left the Police Service in the mid-2000s, and has since been working as the Chief Instructor and field operative for a security firm called Fortis Pro Active Defense Solutions, which, being that this is South Africa and all, means that he’s kind of like a mix between a Parris Island Drill Instructor, those guys that drive the Brinks trucks, and Keanu Reeves at the end of John Wick 2 when every highly-trained assassin on the planet is trying to murder him in the face with a machine gun made out of a violin or whatever. Fortis has a YouTube page that features Prinsloo in a few of their videos, and it looks like their version of firearms training requires you to fistfight a dude for a minute and a half before you can move on and start firing rounds downrange at targets. If Chief Instructor Prinsloo won’t let you practice your shooting until you’ve had a goddamned 200-pound South African repeatedly punch you in the side of the head for sixty seconds I’d hate to see what this guy’s Combat Driving course looks like.
But, that’s the kind of training you need when you’re suddenly thrust into a situation where a bunch of dillholes are trying to shoot you in the throat and steal your Nokia.
Here’s the dashcam video of how Leo Prinsloo reacted:
Now, Prinsloo’s passenger, Lloyd Mtombemi, caught a little bit of shit from this video, mostly on account of how he kinda spends pretty much the entire video looking like he’s about to shit a brick of C4, but keep this in mind -- it was the dude’s fourth fucking day on the job, and, while Mtombemi had worked in security before, this was his first time actually being shot at by people who were actively trying to murder him. So… cut him some slack. Plus, because this Toyota was designed to be inconspicuous and look like a standard-issue vehicle to a casual observer (the terrorists only knew it was a CIT truck because they’d paid off the damn cops for intel), it didn’t have any gun ports or anything like that for him to shoot out of. Oh, right, and when Prinsloo tells Mtombemi to call for backup, that’s when he learns that these damn gangsters are using a fucking signal scrambler to block his cell phone from calling out. If a dozen guys with high tech gadgets scrambling your comms and ripping AK rounds into your windshield doesn’t cause your face to show just a *tiny* bit of concern then you’re either completely mental, completely oblivious, or you’re Leo Fucking Prinsloo.
Through his shattered mirrors and windows, Prinsloo swerved and sped through traffic, with the black Audi in full pursuit. Then, from up ahead, shit got even worse -- a truck stopped off and dropped off six guys with assault rifles, and they were sprinting to firing positions across the street.
Leo Prinsloo drove straight into them. As far as he figured, maybe he could fuck up their rhythm by bouncing a couple of those fuckers off his front bumper.
The would-be assassins dove for cover as Prinsloo hurtled into them, barely missing one of them and banging into the door of the truck that was dropping them off. He sped ahead, but it only took those guys a minute to regain their feet and open fire on the fleeing Toyota. One round shot out the right front tire of Prinsloo’s vehicle, sending him swerving for a terrifying moment before he regained control. The driving from that point forward was hard, and the steering got a bit loose, and all Prinsloo could think about was that if he overcompensate too much he was going to flip that armored car on its side and make life really fucking difficult for himself and his buddy Lloyd.
Then, out of seemingly nowhere, another white truck rolled up on Prinsloos flank, carrying more shooters. Prinsloo, clearly battle hardened from years of Spy Hunter and GTA Online, he did what any badass would have done in such a scenario -- he fucking sideswiped that shit with his armored Toyota. This balls-out maneuver -- ramming an opposing vehicle while you’re down a tire -- worked. Prinsloo banged that truck out of the way, sent it spinning off, and hurtled ahead, with the Black Audi still in hot pursuit.
Driving hard, with his vehicle badly damaged and becoming increasingly difficult to control, Prinsloo started looking for a place where he could get out and fight from an advantageous tactical position. He found his chance not long after -- a hotel parking lot that had some concrete barriers set out front. He raced towards the car park, then stopped and swerved to ram the Audi, smashing it head-on into one of the barriers. The Audi spun out, and, seeing that he finally had the upper hand on these fucks, Leo Prinsloo grabbed the AR-15 from his associate, stopped the damn armored car, and got out to fight.
The driver of the Audi had seen enough. He got out of his wrecked car and ran for it. Prinsloo, much to his dismay, didn’t open fire, because he didn’t want to engage at long range with a bunch of innocent bystanders around. Which, yeah, not shooting into a crowd of people is probably a good call. Prinsloo held his position, but no attack came. The gangsters bolted for it.
The entire fight had lasted just two and a half minutes. The gunmen fired thirty rounds at him, hitting the Toyota thirteen times and destroying most of its windows and its front tire. But, despite that damage, despite the adrenaline surging through his veins, nothing was going to stop Leo Prinsloo from barreling through them, wrecking one high-priced Audi and ramming the fuck out of a pickup truck, then sending everyone running for their lives at the sight of this pissed-off South African cop charging right at them with an assault rifle.
Awesome.
In the month since this attack, two more cash-in-transit vehicles have been hit by gangsters -- in one case both drivers were killed and the money was taken, but the other time resulted in a gunfight that lasted several minutes and turned the outskirts of Pretoria into a literal war zone, yet luckily didn’t result in any casualties. The cops and army guys responsible for tipping off the gangsters have been arrested and brought to justice, which is great, but sadly Prinsloo himself has been the subject of several death threats, with apparently a few of these gangsters swearing revenge on him. However, like a true badass, Prinsloo and his buddies have said, basically, “Nah, it’ll be fine, because we’re gonna get them first”. Prinsloo is currently under police protection (and surveillance from his own private security guys), and none of this has slowed him down from continuing the fight against crime and corruption in his country -- he’s used his new-found media exposure as an opportunity to advocate for better training for security personnel, and to bring awareness to the increasingly-dangerous crime situation in South Africa. Which, if you ask me, is a pretty noble cause.
If you want to support him and his company, you can find their website here.
