A mother’s warnings to her child if faced with danger — to press the panic button and run to safety and hide — may be what saved them both from armed thugs when their Theescombe home was broken into at the weekend.
The woman, 50, who suffered a harrowing ordeal at the hands of her attackers, recalled on Monday how blood had streamed down her face after a bullet grazed the top of her head.
The woman and her daughter, 12, narrowly escaped with their lives when they fell victim to yet another farm or smallholding attack on Saturday night.
The woman owns a bee rescue centre on the smallholding and asked not to be named to protect her daughter’s identity.
When she went to bed at about 9pm on Saturday, her daughter had stayed in the lounge to watch a movie.
“I fell asleep, but I was woken by someone pulling the blankets off me.
“I thought it was my daughter at first,” the woman said.
“I then felt someone climb on top of the bed.
“When I realised what was happening, three men were beside my bed.
“One was on top of me and the other two were holding me down on either side.”
The men wore balaclavas and one of them had a gun.
“While they were demanding money, one of the men tried to pry the woman’s wedding ring off her finger with his teeth.
That was when she heard the house alarm go off.
When the three men left her room, the woman ran through the house screaming as she searched for her daughter.
What she did not know at the time is that, earlier, her daughter had been lying in the lounge with headphones on when the robbers made their way into the living room.
The girl had heard the back door “vibrate”, but assumed it was the family’s dogs scratching on the door.
The next thing she knew, five men were in the house.
While pointing a gun at her, they told the girl to keep quiet and asked her where her parents were.
When three of the men made their way to the main bedroom, one of the other two started ransacking the house and the other one instructed the daughter to follow him outside.
Instead, she ran to the front door, hit the panic button and hid on the property.
During the commotion, the woman ended up in the lounge with a gun pointed in her face.
“They kept demanding money and I said I did not have any.
“The one with the gun tried to get my wedding ring off with his teeth.
“He also wanted my earrings,” she said.
“When he tried to hit me with the revolver, a shot went off.
“It grazed my skull and the bullet went through the ceiling.”
When the men fled, the woman ran to activate the alarm again.
She was reunited with her daughter after the girl saw the men run off.
The Tac Net security company responded within three minutes and the property was soon swarming with police.
The robbers fled with a laptop, cellphone, vehicle keys, earrings and a laptop bag containing personal documents.
A house robbery case was reported at the Kabega Park police station.
HeraldLIVE
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