Pregnant woman saves father during farm attack

It was an ordinary Sunday morning when Albert Erasmus got ready to go to church.

While he was busy opening the gate to his farm, located between Ogies and Kriel in Mpumalanga, the morning took a dramatic turn when he was confronted by three armed men.

Erasmus’s daughter Heleen*, who was in the house at the time with her mother and two children, sensed trouble when she saw that the bakkie her father was driving was still on the property, as her father should have been on the road at that stage, she told Witbank News.

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“At that moment, I didn’t see anything, so after 15 minutes I decided to open the door, because something wasn’t right. I opened the door and saw three men surrounding my father,” she explained.

“The events of that day are only coming back to me now, piece by piece. According to my dad, he climbed out of the bakkie to open the gate so that he could leave when he was attacked. We suspect the suspects hid behind an old military vehicle. My dad’s first instinct was to try and flee when he saw the men were armed, but they caught up with him and began roughing him up.”

The terrifying picture Heleen paints was that the armed men stood in a circle around her father.

“All I could see was how my father tried to stop them with his hands, probably to prevent them from stabbing him or hurting him more. I began to scream hysterically and shouted to the suspects in the hopes that they would run away, but instead one turned around and began running towards the house.”

At that point, Heleen, 30 weeks pregnant, grabbed her son, locked the kitchen door and ran to lock the steel gate.

“I can’t exactly remember what I shouted, but I know I shouted to my mom, ‘farm attack, three armed men’. My mother went to fetch a gun and ran to the bathroom. I fired four warning shots, which gave the men a fright. They jumped in the bakkie and drove away,” Heleen said.

After Heleen saw the bakkie drive away, she made sure that no one else was one the property before rushing to see if her father was ok.

Erasmus assured his daughter he was alright.

The stab wound inflicted on Albert Erasmus during the farm attack on March 17.

“I immediately looked for signal to call emergency services, while my mother waited with my dad.”

Janse Potgieter from Highveld Farm Watch, Sector three, arrived on the scene with a Legacy Ambulance, Middelburg’s K9 unit, Ogies police, and fellow farmers.

“I can’t describe how incredible it was that our community helped and supported us. There was a farmer who immediately dispatched his helicopter to help find the suspects,” Heleen added.

Erasmus’s bakkie was found three kilometres from the house, with his cellphone and cash missing. A knife suspected to belong to one of the men was also found in his bakkie.

“We suspect that the three suspects are the same men who tried to break into our house on January 19,” she said.

Erasmus was stabbed in the back, hit over the head, and beaten up.

“If you sit back and think about how things could have turned out, there is only one thing that one can do, and that is to thank God,” Heleen concluded.

*The daughter’s identity is being withheld for security reasons.

This article was translated from Afrikaans by Nica Schreuder. 

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