Johannesburg - When she was held up with a meat cleaver and had her front teeth smashed on the road by a gang of 10 men, Skye Forrester thought she was going to die.
Forrester, a social media manager from Bryanston, endured this harrowing ordeal on Saturday night at about 7pm in Newtown.
She and some of her friends, including a male friend for safety reasons, had left the Carfax club and walked to a nearby petrol station to draw money.
When they were about 200m from the venue on their return, they were approached by about 10 men, one of whom grabbed her friend’s handbag. Her friend fled.
“They pulled out a knife, not a bread knife or anything, like a meat cleaver. It wasn’t serrated and (it) was massive,” she said.
They threatened her male friend and told him they would stab him if he tried to intervene while the man with the knife “kept gesturing a stabbing motion” at Forrester.
They demanded her phone which she handed over immediately but they kept pushing and pulling her.
“I thought I was going to die, I really did,” she said.
She also has a burn on her neck from her handbag strap – which was slung diagonally across her chest – caused by the men trying to rip it from her as they would not allow her to take it off herself.
One of these tugs from the men threw her to the ground.
“I fell to the floor, hard. I saw my teeth scrape the road, I think they were still dragging me,” she said.
Her front teeth were smashed by the impact and she had an emergency appointment with the dentist on Monday afternoon.
While on the floor she felt another shove to her head but fortunately a car came past at this point, causing the gang to disperse with her cellphone and none of the money she had taken from the ATM.
“I don’t know who was driving that car but I owe them my life… all that for a phone,” she said.
Police spokesman Warrant Officer Jerbes de Bruyn confirmed a case of robbery had been opened but could not provide any further details, including whether any arrests had been made.
Co-owner of Carfax, Sasha Fabris, said they were “mortified” by the incident as they employed a team of security guards.
“We do take security extremely seriously and on this occasion they went outside of our jurisdiction,” Fabris said.
She said the club offered security escorts should patrons have to walk somewhere and they had card facilities so that people didn’t need to carry cash.
“If you’re not streetwise at all times these things can happen,” she said.
The Star