Elderly woman attacked with crowbar
The victim negotiated that she would tell them where her money was, in exchange for her life.
In the early hours of Thursday, June 24, Susan Orpen was woken up by a strange noise and shuffling outside her house in Muldersdrift. The 75-year-old immediately knew that something was wrong and before she could react, two men were in her bedroom.
“One had a crowbar and he just hit me over the head. They were fairly young and they wanted to know where my TV and my cellphone were, and whether I had money,” she began. Orpen negotiated that she would tell them where her money was, in exchange for her life, resulting in them moving through the house and taking what they could.
The intruders instructed her to lie down on the bed where they covered her with a blanket. After they had left, she pressed the panic button. “When you feel there is danger approaching, you don’t think rationally. I froze. My panic button was hanging right there next to me. I should have pressed it the minute I heard something; but then there is a school of thought that says ‘it’s a good thing you didn’t press the panic button when they were in the house because it could have made them angry and one had a gun’. Who knows what would have happened?”
Her daughter, Pheasant Orpen-Reid, who lives a few metres away from her mother’s house, said she heard the alarm go off but it was nothing out of the ordinary. She explained that it sometimes goes off because of their dogs. “You sort of stop taking notice when they constantly bark.” She said her mother called her and said she had been attacked and when she finally got to her, she found her covered in blood. “She was in a state. They had tied her wrists with laces and she had an open wound on her head.”
The two robbers took two computers, a bottle of wine, spare car keys and R2 000 in cash. “It’s not a massive haul and they didn’t wreck anything,” Susan began, but her daughter quickly interjected. “But mom, it is a massive haul. It’s money that she uses for wages. She worked hard for that money, she teaches a lot of classes. She doesn’t have a set salary.”
We live in a country where crime has become such a normal part of our lives that when we or the people we know become victims of crime, it is not out of the ordinary to hear “at least you are still alive”. But at what cost? Besides dealing with the trauma of an attack, there are the financial costs of replacing what was taken or adding more security to the home.
Orpen said she has had to change all the locks and she had to have a brain scan. “The whole thing is going to end up costing me about R20 000 for the locks, brain scan, stitches and all the inconvenience.”
Clearly exasperated, she added, “We shouldn’t have to live like this. I made one small error with the window. These people were obviously watching me and they saw that little error with the window and they pounced. This is my third assault with robbery. Why do we have to live like this?”
Captain Solomon Sibiya from the Muldersdrift Police confirmed the armed robbery and said the robbers gained entry through a window that was slightly open.
