Feisty retiree wrestles attacker

A RELAXED evening watching the Sharks take on the Highlanders on Saturday quickly turned into a nightmare for a retired physiotherapist living in Umbilo.

Angela Thistlethwaite had settled in for the afternoon to watch the quarter finals of the exciting Super Rugby match when about half an hour into the game, her cat disturbed her. “I thought there was a stray cat in the yard so went out to check but I saw nothing. I was at the door walking in about to lock the gate when I felt someone grab my neck from behind.”

The 68-year-old Angela recalls being caught completely off guard as her home is fully fenced and it was still day light. As Angela tried desperately to stop the man from strangling her, she was pushed into her kitchen and fell with her attacker to the floor.

“He was a young, reasonably well dressed youngster maybe 18 or 20 years old. He continued trying to strangle me. I was trying to stop him from killing me. We had a couple of rounds of fighting and rolling on the kitchen floor. I was shouting and kept saying, ‘You’re not killing me on my kitchen floor!”

Angela said she felt the youngster was trying to silence her. “I don’t think he expected me to fight back, but he didn’t ask for anything. He only said one thing: ‘keep quiet, stop shouting’. Unfortunately he saw an empty glass bottle next to the bin and hit me across the face with it, breaking my nose.”

The attacker jumped to his feet and ran into Angela’s lounge where he grabbed her handbag containing her purse, with less than R100, prescription glasses, ID, driver’s licence and credit cards, before fleeing.

Dazed from being hit in the face and with blood pouring from her face, Angela was able to call a neighbour who rushed to the Umbilo police station, stationed nearby, and returned with a police officer. “The officer, Brian Samsodien was very helpful. He told me to go to hospital and get my wounds seen too. The bottle broke my nose and gave me two black eyes, thankfully it didn’t break on my face!” She also sustained bruises on her legs.

Angela said what got her through the ordeal was focusing on getting her attacker’s hands off her throat. “I didn’t want to die of strangulation,” she said, laughing.

“I can’t believe how calm I have been since it happened. I guess speaking to everyone has been therapeutic. It is all so senseless, if he wanted to rob me I would have given him my money and cellphone. I may not have been happy but I would have given it to him,” the feisty retiree said.

“What is shocking is the total lack of human feeling and compassion. People meant nothing to him, I could see that, he was probably so zonked on drugs that he didn’t have any real sense of what he was doing. I hope he got some bruises too and a bruised ego. You don’t expect to find somebody invading your property and privacy so early in the evening. The viciousness of the attack was shocking. I am almost certain he was on whoonga, I can’t see any reason why he would be so vicious!”

“The police were very supportive and took fingerprints and even managed to retrieve my ID and driver’s licence from Warwick Avenue, so I’m looking at the incident as a learning curve. I am eternally grateful and definitely looking at the bright side and glad I don’t have to replace my documents.” The incident hasn’t stopped her from going out during the day, she’s already been out to play croquet but says she just can’t go out and look at the full moon or the stars.

“The crime needs to be stopped, we cannot have this degree of crime anywhere, its uncontrollable now. I know its related to unemployment, but the City needs to find alternative measures to keep these young people busy. I feel desperately sorry for some of these youngsters that have no future, but there are others that make a success of their lives, so there is no excuse to be violent criminals,” she said.

In a final appeal to Mayor James Nxumalo, Angela said: “Please Mr Nxumalo do something to clean up these drug addicts in the Glenwood/Umbilo area before you have no ratepayers left.”