“BE quiet or I’ll kill you.” These were the chilling words that a robber said to a 6-year-old girl and her 15-year-old sister last week when he invaded their La Lucia home in the early hours of Thursday morning. He then grabbed the terrified girls by their neck and marched them to the window of their bedroom, forcing them to look down at his accomplices. When the girls looked down the armed men repeated the words to terrify the young girls into silence.
The robber had made his way up to the third floor of a high rise block of flats and entered through their sisters bedroom window.
“This was pure psychological terror,” said Bruce Warren talking to Northglen News about his family’s harrowing and traumatising experience.
The father of five said the young house robber began looting the house and had started handing smaller items like clothes, laptops and cellphones down to his accomplices.
“He then decided to go into another bedroom. At this point I heard a faint noise and thought it was one of my daughters. I got up to investigate and spotted him. There was 15 yards separating me from the suspect. I just charged at him, I didn’t care if he was armed or not I just wanted to get to my daughters,” the angry father said.
The suspect in his haste to getaway jumped out the third story window.
“The girls were screaming in terror. I didn’t even bother looking out at the suspect, I was trying to calm them down. After some time they told me he (the robber) initially forced them to lie down on the ground. He told them that he was going to let in the group of armed men through the front door and if they made any sound he would kill them,” Warren recalled.
He added his daughters were so traumatised after the incident they could not sleep in the same room the night after their terrifying ordeal.
When the police arrived they informed Warren that armed gangs were using the modus operandi of sending the smallest person in through a window. It is this person’s job to unlock the front door of the house.
“I would like to warn other people that being high up doesn’t necessarily mean criminals can’t get to you. I’d also like to thank the Durban North SAPS and the Durban North Umhlanga Crisis Team who were there within minutes. You don’t realise how these incidents can traumatise families until you go through something like this,” he said.
