A CRIMINAL’S plan to ‘smoke’ his victims into a deep sleep was quickly extinguished on Friday night after he was arrested by a local security company. Instead he managed to set the roof of an Uitsig Road home on fire.

Criminals have used the tactic of burning a chemical substance to gas their victims into a deep sleep previously, but this is one of the first such incidents in Durban North in recent years. The fire department was called out and the flames were quickly doused.

The suspect who was apprehended by Blue Security was handed over to the SAPS.

Blue Security’s operations manager Brian Jackson said a neighbour had called the company’s control centre at 11.54pm on Friday night (25 October) saying there was a woman screaming in Uitsig Road.

“Our reaction officers responded to the scene where a resident stopped them and advised that there was someone breaking into her property,” he said.

“The suspect then emerged from the back of the property and one of our officers chased him and arrested him in Prospect Hall Road, ” he said.

“Our officers inspected the roof and found that the suspect had removed tiles from the roof and dropped a burning object into the ceiling. The ceiling was on fire and smoke was wafting out of the roof,” he said.

“The fire department extinguished the flames,” he said.
Jackson said it was disturbing to note the re-emergence of this modus operandi.

“We have not had an incident of this nature reported for several years and we urge residents to consider improving the security of the perimeter of their properties with an electric fence linked to their home alarm system and to ensure that if they have external beams, that these are activated before going to sleep at night.

“It’s also important to install a sensor in the roof to detect intruders, which are turning more often to roofs as a point of entry, and to make sure that all windows, even those on upper levels, are closed at night, especially as we enter into the summer months,” Jackson said.