The wooden door of the house in Ben Fleur pushes open heavily, and yet another gate bars the way into living area.
“We are living in a jail now,” the woman of the house says as she unlocks the gate.
On Saturday, June 28 another family experienced the fear, as many other robbery victims had, when they were trapped inside their home by three armed men.
The woman’s husband, who wishes to keep himself and his family anonymous, told that they had friends over for the evening who were just about to leave, when they were surprised by the men at their door.
“My wife opened the door and they were there, shoving her back inside the house,” he recalls.
“We didn’t at first register what was happening,” his wife added. “It just happened so fast.”
The husband, wife and their 17-year-old daughter were tied up with cable ties, as well as their friends and their two young children.
As they were forced to lie down on the floor, while their hands were tied behind their back, the husband remembers how one of the suspects put his foot down hard on his dislocated shoulder.
“They wanted to take her,” the husband recalled as he gestured towards his teenage daughter.
It was something the father could not allow and through the pain and discomfort of the heavy weight on his injured arm, he still managed to shift over and cover his daughter with his body.
As the robbers were struggling to take the 17-year-old to one of the bedrooms, her father managed to get hold the panic button to set off the alarm in the house.
The robbers made haste, clearing out the house and taking any valuables they could find.
“One came running out with our TV, and I mean it is a big TV,” the wife recalls. Telling how easily the suspects managed to get all of their loot over the wall between their house and the neighbours’.
As the suspects could not find the right keys to the family’s vehicle outside, they left without it, hauling all their stolen goods over the wall.
The husband adds that the robbers could have still been caught if it had not been for their home security’s late response.
“The Neighbourhood Watch was the first to arrive, even the police were here fast,” he says.
“I mean, if someone presses a panic button it means there’s danger and they should send out more than just one guard!”
The family and their friends were left physically unharmed, but mentally traumatised after the incident.
Last year in December, the family reported an attempted break-in. This time they were not so lucky to be away from home when the armed suspects set them as targets.
No arrests have yet been made and police warned that members of the community should keep a lookout for these armed and dangerous suspects.
“All I can say is when something like this happens, when you are confronted by armed robbers, the main thing is just to keep calm,” the husband said looking at his family, relieved that they are all still safe and alive.
