Thieves smash through wall in attempted robbery

AN uMhlanga resident has described her traumatic ordeal following an attempted robbery at her Ridge Road home on Wednesday afternoon last week. Farrah Stegen was at home with her father when armed men forced their way into her home.

The suspects, which consisted of a gang of four, used the bushes along the M4 to get to the fence topped with barbed wire and electric fencing. It’s thought they used a rubber mallet or piece of stone to break through one of the slats of the wall to gain access to the home.

“I happened to be working from home that evening and my dad had just come home and had opened the security door to our garden to let our dogs out for a wee. It was still light outside at about 5pm. He then got ready to cook and was approaching the door to the garden when he was saw four men, one of whom was armed with a gun, running towards him.

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“Our kitchen has two hall entrances and my father went one way and the suspects the other. I heard him make this weird, almost grunting noise and I thought something doesn’t sound right. As I got up to investigate, he shouted up ‘Farrah, we are being robbed’. I pressed our panic alarm and attempted to message the Ridge Road CPF, which we are part of, to alert them to the incident. I then locked myself out on the balcony putting a security gate between myself and the suspects and then phoned for help,” she explained.

What Stegen did not know was that the alarm had spooked the suspects who ran back through the garden and escaped through the hole in the fence they had created.

“As they were running, we heard a single gunshot, then a few more sounding further away. The bush between our home and the M4 is quite thick but these guys seemed to know their way through the bush,” she said.

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Stegen added she was blessed and thankful that no one was harmed during the traumatic ordeal nor was anything stolen.

“We are very lucky that no harm came to us. The whole incident just reminded me how important it is for structures like the CPF and neighbourhood watches to be in place. Residents are very conscious of the surge in crime in the different but I would like to see those in the community who haven’t signed up to the CPF to be part of a pro-active approach in trying to beat this scourge of crime,” she said.

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