Durban - A Westville man, who was early on Thursday morning accosted by a knife-wielding house robber, has come out in praise of police and the local neighbourhood watch who, he says, went above and beyond the call to assist him.
“I don’t know all of their names but I really want to thank them,” he said on Thursday morning.
“They were fantastic. There were off-duty policemen here, they mobilised the dog unit. Even the local station commander came through.”
The man, who asked not to be named, said he was working late and fell asleep in the lounge of his Roberts Place home.
“The lights were on and I had my laptop open,” he said.
He woke at about 3am to find an intruder quietly packing up his laptop and other valuables.
He later discovered the intruder had gained entry through a louvre window, from which he had carefully removed the glass.
“I told him to leave but he refused,” the man said. A scuffle then ensued during which the intruder, who was armed with a knife, stabbed the homeowner in the head and arm.
The pair wrestled and the man managed to push the intruder out through the same window he came in through.
But while the man had been asleep, the intruder had unlocked the security gate and, even after the man had pushed him out the window, he came back through the security gate.
“My wife woke up and came and helped me,” the man said. “We were hitting him with anything we could find, the house was a mess this morning.”
Eventually, the man and his wife managed to get the intruder out of the house and close the door behind him.
They then pushed the panic button. Of his injuries, the man said he would have them attended to on Thursday morning.
Police recovered a laptop bag, believed to have been taken in another house robbery in the area earlier, but the intruder managed to escape.
This is the latest in a series of violent house robberies to have hit Durban’s Outer West suburbs in recent months. Police spokesman, Major Thulani Zwane, said a cellphone, wallet and GPS had been taken.
Daily News