‘I thought this was the day I would die’: Victim recounts attack
The woman, who would not be named as her attacker is still on the loose, said she is still reeling from the trauma caused by a robber who had entered her home while she was having lunch in her kitchen on Tuesday afternoon, April 5.
Trying desperately to avoid looking into the face of her attacker, a Steiltes woman felt the rope tightening around her neck and thought it would be her last day on Earth.
She said she had come home from work at about 13:00 for lunch as she usually does, and had left the back gate of her door open to let her cats out while she started making a sandwich, when the man appeared.
“I hadn’t even had time to make the sandwich properly when I turned around and saw this man in a mask standing in front of me,” she said.
“I had a fork in one hand and an egg in the other. I screamed when I saw him and tried to defend myself with the fork, but he just bent it and pressed a knife right up against my cheek and told me to be quiet.
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“He tied me up and demanded money, but I did not have cash on me. I told him to take anything he wanted and begged him not to hurt me,” said the woman.
She said the timeline of the incident is still muddled in her mind due to the trauma she had experienced that afternoon, but said she was slapped through the face several times and given a black eye when he punched her in the face and threatened to kill her multiple times, even going so far as to wrap rope around her neck and pulling it tight.
“I thought this was the day I would die, my last day on Earth. He pulled the rope tight and then pulled my head back for me to look at him, and pressed a knife right against my throat.” She said at some stage, the attacker stabbed her in her hand, causing her to bleed profusely. She asked the robber to let her go so she could get medical attention.
“I did not want to look at him. He was wearing a buff and a cap, but his eyes were not covered. I didn’t want to look into them. He was swearing at me, saying horrible things. When he was searching my home for things to steal, he found a hammer and told me he was going to beat me to death with it,” she said.
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After gathering up her laptop, tablet, cellphones and other items he had stolen from the house, he came back to where the woman was sitting, holding her bloodied hand tightly in a towel, and found her praying.
“He brought a Bible to me and then placed the sandwich I had been making on it. He said he had noticed that he interrupted me during my lunch and that I should finish my sandwich.
“He took or cleaned up everything he touched. He took my bank cards and said if I did not give him the correct pins, he would come back and kill me.” She said the man also took her car keys and house keys, and that just before he left, he wrapped some art tape around her face about 20 times and just left her nostrils open so she could breathe.
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The attacker left in the woman’s car, which was found the next day, abandoned in KaNyamazane. The woman managed to escape and jumped over her neighbour’s fence to alert him.
Hi-Tech attended to the scene and an ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital so her wounds could be treated. “I think he had been watching my movements that day. He knew that there was a garden service at my home that morning and even asked me if I was sure they were done for the day when he first entered the house.”
A case of house robbery was opened at the Nelspruit Police Station and is being investigated.
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