WATCH: Glenwood pastor robbed at knifepoint during livestream sermon
"I looked at his physical build and considered whether I should wrestle him for the phone. As these thoughts entered my mind, he pulled out a knife," recounted pastor Douglas Mellish.
“EVERYTHING played out in slow motion, I could see him pulling the knife from his left pocket and putting it in his hand, holding it with the blade pointing down, ready to chop at me.”
These are the words of Glenwood resident, Douglas, Mellish, a pastor at CityHill Pinetown, who was robbed while recording a sermon on Facebook at about 7pm on Rick Turner Road, yesterday, 14 June.
The pastor had taken to the streets for the recording because the power was out at his home.
“We had a power outage at our house from 9.00 yesterday morning. I have a broadcast that I do on Monday evenings. The broadcast started during lockdown in our inability to meet and I kept the habit of broadcasting live,” he said.
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With the power outage, Mellish had turned on a generator which made a lot of noise. Rather than leave his family in the dark, he decided to leave the generator running and do the broadcast outside under the street light.
“I have a three-year-old boy, when he hears my voice, he can’t understand why he can’t come to me. I would usually do my broadcast outside the house in the yard, but with the generator running, it was too noisy, I couldn’t find a place in the yard where the noise wouldn’t interfere with the broadcast. Luckily the power was on around us – everyone has power except us. I decided to go and stand on the island. Rick Turner Road is a well-lit street,” said Mellish.
“As I started the broadcast I saw a car stop behind me. I immediately became aware of it, because it came down quite fast and then stopped behind me, which I thought was suspicious,” he added.
When the driver paused and then drove off, Mellish continued the broadcast.
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“We have a lot of students and Ubers on the road at all hours of the night. Having cars park like that isn’t unusual, so I continued the broadcast which is about 20 minutes,” he said. As he was wrapping up the broadcast, he spotted a man walking toward him. “He was first walking and then all of a sudden started sprinting toward me,” said Mellish.
“I looked at his physical build and considered whether I should wrestle him for the phone. As these thoughts entered my mind, he pulled out a knife. I kept saying, ‘you can have it,’ so he would know I was cooperating. As I said it I threw the phone just past him. He stopped to pick it up and I stepped back,” he continued.
“He had a look in his eyes that he would stab me to inflict some sense of damage and then search me for whatever else I had. I had a watch on me and stuff like that,” he added.
The suspect grabbed the phone and fled.
“He bolted toward the car and jumped in, it was a Toyota, I think it was an Etios. Off they sped, I couldn’t see if they had a number plate. I waited until they left before going to my house because I didn’t want to draw attention to my house,” concluded Mellish.
