Last Thursday was a time of many firsts for mother of two, Tafadzwa Ndoro.
Mrs Ndoro will always remember March 20 as the first time she was targeted by crime in eight years, and the day she raised her hands to literally strike back against it.
The self-employed mother recalled her ordeal clearly.
Mrs Ndoro was inside her Arbor Park home that day, suddenly alerted to a criminal fleeing with a pink child’s bicycle belonging to her friend and neighbour.
Enraged, she decided to give chase to the thief.
“I saw him running down the road and ran after him. I shouted at two men to help me catch the guy.”
Sure enough, the men stopped the perpetrator in his tracks.
However, already dead set on teaching the criminal a lesson he would not forget, Mrs Ndoro laid into the thief with the closest objects at hand, a thick branch and a rock.
“I beat him and he said ‘sorry’, so I hit him again,” Mrs Ndoro admitted with a bashful smile.
She struck the criminal a few times before the police were contacted.
Explaining her decision to chase down the criminal, Mrs Ndoro said it was unacceptably painful to have bought something, only to watch another person take it.
Secondly, she had vowed to discourage the thief from coming back to her street again.
“When the cops arrived, I asked if they couldn’t leave the guy with me – he promised he wouldn’t come back.”
Mrs Ndoro said in the wake of her true fight against crime, she was inspired to form a women’s group to catch criminals in the Arbor Park suburb and give them ‘warnings’.
Previously, a neighbour was held at gunpoint and robbed en route to work.
Asked about her opinion of the crime situation in Arbor Park, Mrs Ndoro said it was very bad and had made her angry, further motivating her to attack anyone breaking the law in her neighbourhood.
“These people take from the grandmothers and cripples; they rape, take grant money and worse.”
Mrs Ndoro said for residents who worked hard for their money, versus criminals stealing for drug funds, the situation was now a matter of fighting to survive.
“No one will take my property from me – this has to stop now.”
