A Sun Valley family is reeling after an armed robbery at their home on 19 January.
Robbyn Wilkinson and her husband were outside tending to their horses at about 9.15pm when four or five armed men entered the grounds underneath a fence and fired a shot. The couple attempted to run inside the house while the men followed them indoors.
“I managed to push the panic button, which I keep around my neck,” Wilkinson told the Fourways Review two days after the incident.
“[The men] tied up my husband outside and then came inside. All the men had shotguns and balaclavas.”
Once inside the men demanded that Wilkinson and her two daughters, also in the home, hand over all their jewellery, phones and other valuables. When Wilkinson struggled to remove a ring from her finger one of the men struck her. Wilkinson’s six-month-old granddaughter was also in the house during the incident but fortunately slept through it.
“The men kept asking about a safe and didn’t believe us when we said that we don’t have
one. They got very angry.
“They also demanded car keys [for the vehicles on the property] but abandoned that once they heard the sirens [from the security and police] approaching and ran away.”
Because the robbers had taken Wilkinson’s iPhone, the family and security services were able to follow them for a time before the men dropped the phones, a laptop and a DVD player.
“[The] property stolen was recovered, except for the jewellery,” confirmed Sergeant Matome Tlamela, spokesperson for the Midrand Police Station.
“No one has been arrested yet, and the suspects are still at large.”
Wilkinson said that no one was physically hurt during the incident and that the family was receiving counselling.
“I’d like to say that it’s very important for people to keep their panic buttons with them as if I had left mine inside it would’ve been no help at all.
“I’d also encourage residents to think of weaknesses in their security – we have security features inside the house, but our routine was to go to the horses at night and the men must have been watching us and seen a weakness.”
