Wedding ring ‘sucked’ from finger by armed robbers at Golden Harvest

“While beating me up, one of them said ‘I want the ring,’ but I truly couldn’t get it off. It has been on for 21 years. So he sat on top of me and sucked it off me.”

It was André Durand’s mother’s ring, which he converted into his wedding ring, that really was the last straw on 17 August, the day he was robbed, beaten up and assaulted in Golden Harvest Park.

Durand decided to walk the short distance home after his wife picked up the children who were out cycling in the park.

“I walked over the wooden bridge toward Northwold. I was almost home when I heard a noise coming over the bridge. Two men came running over with big machetes and I knew immediately what was happening,” Durand said.

He said he tried to fight back, but was grabbed by his hair and thrown to the ground, beaten up and his ribs cracked.

“One of them, the tall thin one said ‘I will kill you. I will kill you’.”

The two men went through Durand’s pockets and took all his valuables, including his shoes. They threw Durand’s cards back at him, after forcing him to remove, and later ‘sucking off ‘, his wedding ring.

“I pleaded with them not to take the ring, I even offered to draw them my maximum,” but they were not interested.

Durand said he was finally left alone, later admitted to hospital and released the following day (18 August) and went straight to the police station. Here, he said, he was equally traumatised by how he was treated by the officers on duty.

“I was in pain, had been badly beaten up, and had just been discharged from the hospital an hour earlier and I was clearly not familiar with the procedures surrounding the reporting of such cases, I had to ask for the process to be repeated to me. I was astounded at the fact that I wasn’t able to open a case or even have any statements taken and I verbally expressed this to both attending police officers,” Durand expressed in his complaint letter addressed to the Community Policing Forum, who said they would forward it to the station.

Durand said the hospital said they needed to have a case number to fill out the form, but the police needed a J88 form, a legal document that indicates injuries sustained, to open a docket.

About two weeks later, after still not being able to obtain a J88 form, a case was opened.

“The detective then phoned me the following day and asked me why I took so long to open a case. I couldn’t believe it,” Durand said.

Police spokesperson, Captain Balan Muthan, said the complaint laid by Durand is being investigated.

Muthan explained that under normal circumstances the police will open a docket and provide the complainant with a stamped J88 form to take to a doctor.

“But this is done when a person’s injuries are not visible and if they have already been to a doctor,” he said.

But if a complainant goes to the station with visible injuries, police will ask the person to go to a hospital to have the form filled out.

Durand said he is happy to offer a reward for the ring. If you have any information contact 079 756 2402.