Johannesburg - The 20-year-old woman stabbed along with her mother and two toddlers in Dobsonville, Soweto, on Friday said they told police they had arrested the wrong man.
“The guy that stabbed us isn't the one they had arrested,” said Busi Khumalo.
“He was shorter [than the suspect] and the one who stabbed us did not have dreadlocks.
“Maybe he was working with him, but only one man came into the house,” she said.
Khumalo was speaking to journalists at her aunt's house, also in Dobsonville, after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said the charges against the man police arrested on Thursday had been withdrawn.
The man had been expected to appear in the Protea Magistrate's Court.
NPA spokeswoman Phindi Louw said the matter was not put on the court roll because of a lack of evidence. The man was released.
Khumalo and her two sons, Lebo, aged three, and Tshiamo, two, and their grandmother, 60, were stabbed in their home on Tuesday night. Two men were believed to be involved.
Sitting on the couch in her aunt's living room, Khumalo said they had an idea of who their attacker was and they had given police all the information.
“There was no forced entry,” Khumalo said.
“It was someone who had a key to the house,” she said.
She suspected the matter had to do with their home, which they had moved into several months ago.
She explained the attack.
“He just walked in and opened my blankets and started stabbing me,” she said.
She was stabbed in the arm and just below her breast.
“I said in a low voice to my mother that I'm being hurt,” she said.
Until then, the attacker had not known that her mother was sleeping in the same room, on the floor next to the bed.
The attacker turned to the grandmother and nicked her forehead with the knife as she began calling for help from her other daughter who slept in another room.
The attacker attacked her sons when they started screaming.
He seemed to have been trying to shut them up as he was worried their screams would alert neighbours, Khumalo said.
The two boys, who sustained stab wounds to their heads, played around their mother with their cousins as she spoke to the media. One had a large white plaster on his head, while the other had a plaster on his ear.
Khumalo said they were all still traumatised.
“They're still a bit shaken. When he hears a bang, he wakes up,” Khumalo said, referring to one of her sons.
“I also still have nightmares.”
The attacker broke the immobiliser of their car, smashed one of its windows and made off with a television set.
Khumalo said she and her children were not planning on returning to the house where they were attacked.
“I'm not going back there. I won't stay there,” she said.
Asked what would happen to the house, she said it was up to her mother to decide.
Meanwhile, police continue with their investigations. - Sapa