POLOKWANE – Safety in mind.
It is with this thought that Sean Bates goes to bed every evening, since he and his mom Sandra live on a small holding in Tweefontein.
“I am always expecting problems at night. One hears of so many attacks, therefore I am always alert.”
It was probably this level of preparedness that saved their lives when danger came knocking on Thursday morning, April 9.
“I fell asleep with the light still on. When I heard a door in the house being broken open at around 03:30, I immediately knew there was trouble.”
In the following moments, two men barged into his room screaming and shouting, one armed with a hammer, the other with a knife he took from the Bates kitchen.
In the scuffle that ensued, Sean was pushed down on to his bed while his one attacker attempted to hit him with the hammer.
“He caught me on the nose as I blocked the rest of the blows with my hands.”
Somewhere in the attack he gestured to the men by lifting his hands, “that I was giving up”.
The attack then stopped. One of the men watched over him while the other started packing some items into a bag.
It was at this point that his mother shouted his name to find out if he was okay, Sean says.
“They then stormed down the passage to get to her.”
With this distraction, Sean saw the opportunity to fetch a firearm from a safe in his room. “I heard my mother scream. Thinking the men got into her room I started to make my way down the passage.”
Sean relates how he fired a warning shot into the floor.
The men then turned their attention to him.
“They came rushing towards me, regardless of the fact that I had fired a shot already. I then fired at the man who came charging at me. I managed to fire another shot before they could reach me,” he says.
His attackers pushed him back into his room where he was stabbed in the head and left arm. The men tried to wrestle the gun out of his hand.
“I held on for dear life, as I knew had they taken the weapon from me, it would mean the end of us,” Sean says.
At this point, his mom had made her way to his room, and managed to grab the knife. His attacker, not giving up, grabbed a DVD player with which he hit Sean over the head. “I then managed to break free and shouted at my mom to get out of the room. I fired a third shot.”
At this point the men started their escape with the bag full of items.
“Through the window I saw the one man falling to his knees. The other one tried to pull him up, but to no avail. He left without him.”
Members of the Community Policing Forum (CPF) were on the scene within minutes and emergency services were called. There is no doubt in the young man’s mind that his attackers planned the worst.
“They were shouting ‘ke tla go bolaya’, which in Sotho means ‘we are going to kill you’”.
The Bates family say that they are thankful to God who gave them the courage and clear thinking that saved their lives.
“Thank you also to all the people who have supported us since,” we would like to especially say thank you to the police, emergency services and the CPF for acting swiftly. You are the real heroes,” Sean said.
Polokwane police spokesperson Capt Ntobeng Phala confirmed that a phone call was logged at around 3:30 on Thursday to report a farm attack.
He confirmed that they found the body of a man in the front yard at the scene. “He was certified dead on arrival.”
A case of house robbery was opened as well as an inquest. He urged anyone with information to contact the police.
