Durban - A burglar raiding a flat in Morningside got the fright of his life when the homeowner, a former Durban cop and self-defence expert, ran at him with a samurai sword and, luckily for him, chopped at him with the blunt edge.
Renette Edwards, 52, said she had been extremely rattled by the experience and had been sleeping with the lights on since the incident on Friday night.
“For the first few nights I have not slept well. Every noise I hear I get paranoid,” Edwards said on Wednesday, but she insisted that, “Women should not feel intimidated. It is an invasion of privacy. We get too comfortable sometimes. You don’t have to be a superhero, but be aggressive, stand up.”
Edwards, who lives in Lambert Road, close to Florida Road, was alerted to the burglary in progress at 9pm last Friday, by a neighbour who contacted her at her workplace nearby.
Edwards said the drama began when her neighbour, Byron (who declined to give the Daily News his surname), heard noises outside his bedroom window and his terrified cat dashed into the room.
Byron peered out but could not see anything.
He later discovered that the burglar had placed a chair below an air-conditioner and used it as a platform to reach Edwards’s first- floor bedroom window. The burglar forced the security bars inwards and climbed in.
Byron’s dog, Toby, also had a strange bark and was pacing up and down the passage, which prompted his owner to investigate again. This time Byron saw a man’s head near the window. He telephoned Edwards and she rushed home with a co-worker.
Edwards said she entered her house and ran up the stairs. She thinks the burglar heard her footsteps, which was when he jumped out of the window. This gave Edwards time and she ran back down, grabbed her samurai sword and rushed to open the patio gate to continue pursuing the thief.
“I could see him coming out of the pool and then trying to get over the wall into the neighbouring complex.
“When I got to him, his takkie was stuck (in the wires of the electric fence) and he was like a statue on the wall. That’s when I struck him with the blunt side of the sword,” Edwards said.
In a fit of rage and fed up with crime, Edwards swung the sword a few more times at him and the man fell off the 2.4m wall into the driveway of the neighbouring complex. At this stage, Edwards was unaware he had taken two watches and a cellphone. She later found her laptop on the windowsill.
“I said to him, ‘you’ll never break in by me again’. I can’t count the number of times I struck him.
“If I knew he had my phones it would have been worse. There were some words I said that you cannot print here. The bugger managed to jump up and climb over the front gates (and the electric fence) of the security complex next door,” she said.
“The burglar must have been in the house for about three minutes. I think he was shocked when he touched the electric fence on the boundary wall. Edwards was really brave to go after him,” Byron said.
Edwards’s co-worker, Kevin Nicholson, was waiting outside when the burglar ran into him. Nicholson directed a punch at the burglar’s mouth, thinking he was going to be attacked.
The man then ran down Florida Road, sopping wet and having lost a shoe and a sock, and hid in an abandoned house in 10th Avenue.
Edwards believes police dogs should have been brought out and could have picked up a scent from the takkie the burglar left behind.
Berea police made an occurrence book entry.
Women hit back
* Would-be burglars got more than they bargained for when they broke into a Kibler Park, Johannesburg, home owned by crime intelligence officers last week.
Captain Thandi Mejelo shot a burglar in his genitals and legs, severely injuring him, after he kicked open their front door. Two other intruders then jumped into the car and started the engine. Mejelo emptied the rest of her bullets into the car.
* A Glenvista, Johannesburg, woman shot dead two burglars who used a crowbar to break into her home early one morning last month.
When a man made his way into her bedroom and threatened to shoot her and her husband, she pulled out her gun from under her pillow and shot him. Her husband tried to tackle a second intruder, but she shot him too. One suspect jumped from the first floor balcony and fell on to the patio after being shot.
* Earlier this month, a woman in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town, locked herself in a bathroom and asked for help on social media after her boyfriend threatened to kill her.
She posted her address on Facebook asking for help. Soon, 700 responses flooded the post, with many calling police who arrived to escort her boyfriend off the premises.
She had intended taking out a restraining order against the man.
* Angelina Youngman, 70, used a telephone directory to beat off a gunman who attacked her at her home in a Sir Lowry’s Pass security estate in Cape Town last month.
She used the directory to hit the gun away as it was held to her face.
The man hit her with the gun behind her left ear and she hit and punched him back. She then managed to flee and notify the neighbours.
Daily News and The Star