EVANDER – An Evander father and his sons narrowly escaped death when they walked in on an armed robbery in progress at the Northview Café and Liquor Store in Evander on Thursday night, 15 August.
Mr Gert Jordaan (55) and his son, Juan (31), were wounded in the ordeal, while his youngest son, Ruan (26) was pinned down in the shop with a gun to his head.
The Jordaan-men stopped in front of the liquor store just after 6pm, unaware that armed robbers were already inside holding up the shopkeepers in both stores.
Ruan walked into the bottle store while his father and brother were waiting in the car.
“I headed to the back of the store to get a beer. The next thing I noticed was the barrel of a gun to my head and a voice telling me to lie down. The gunman then sat on my back, still pressing the gun against my skull.”
“I felt so powerless and could not even warn my dad and brother, so I just begged Jesus to protect them.”
At that time, Juan’s phone rang. It was his mother, Ms Doreen Jordaan, who wanted to know what was taking them so long. The family lives barely a block away.
“My phone is faulty and I can only communicate on speaker phone. Because it was quiet outside, everyone could hear the conversation, even those inside the bottle store,” Juan explained.
Gert climbed out of the front passenger side of the car and headed towards the bottle store a few strides away, but was stopped by a bullet to the neck.
“I just felt being knocked off balance and a burning sensation on the right side of my neck.”
As Gert fell, Juan jumped out to help his dad, but a gunman came running from the side.
“My dad yelled at me to get out of there, so I dived back into the car and, while hiding under the dashboard, reversed and sped off to our house,” said Juan. He was shot in the groin and bleeding.
According to Ms Jordaan, Juan rushed into the house and just kept repeating “Dad is dead”. He thought the robbers chased after him.
“Juan was tugging at his clothes. I did not know he had been shot, only that there was blood.”
Paramedics fron ER24 and Langamed were deployed to the store and the family’s house.
The robbers fled the scene with cash, cigarettes and liquor from the stores. They also searched and robbed the staff and customers, including the wounded Gert.
Ruan applied ice to his father’s wound until help arrived.
Juan underwent surgery to remove the bullet from the left side of his groin. It narrowly missed his pelvic bone and the main artery in his loin. He was released from hospital on Saturday.
Gert, who does not have medical aid cover, was taken to the emergency room of the Highveld Mediclinic, but was eventually told to go to Evander Hospital or to seek help from his general physician (GP).
Although the X-ray shows the bullet is still lodged in Gert’s neck, his doctor believes it will be too dangerous to cut out.
“He said it is too close to arteries. We should monitor it and hope that it will fester and come out by itself.
“It will also be too dangerous to remove, because I have had two prior neck operations after an injury underground,” he explained.
While Gert and Juan are healing from their physical wounds, Ruan is fighting another battle.
This is the second time he is being held hostage with a gun to his head. He was only 17 years old when he first became a victim of a house robbery.
Messrs Ronnie Nelson and Werner Groenewalt from AfriForum in Evander were the first to arrive on the scene.
“We were close by when we heard the gunshots. We saw the robbers jump into a double cab bakkie and speed off,” said Mr Nelson.
He commended Mr Alf Byleveldt from Jelani Security, the paramedics and the police for their swift reaction.
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