Attorney cheats death again
Three young men smashed their main bedroom window with a spade to gain entry.
Amanzimtoti attorney Yolandi van der Watt, who almost died in a shooting incident in Doonside in February, has had another close escape after three men invaded her Shulton Park house on Friday, 9 December.
Yolandi, her husband, two young children and elderly mother were asleep in their Vasco Da Gama home when three young men smashed their main bedroom window with a spade to gain entry at about 2am.
“My youngest daughter was asleep with us in the bed,” said Yolandi. “My 61-year-old mother came into the room when she heard the noise and we fought them off. Fortunately they were not armed, although they pretended to be. One of them hit my mother and she fell.”
The family fought back so fiercely, the men decided they had had enough, grabbed car keys and fled, but dropped the keys on the way out.
Yolandi had the presence of mind to hit the panic button as soon as they broke the window and their security company and Toti SAPS were quick to respond.
A month earlier the family lost all their electronic devices after their lounge was ransacked as they slept.
Fortunately Yolandi’s three-year-old daughter slept through the commotion and her 18-month-old daughter, who usually sleeps in her cot by the window, was in bed with them.
Her mother was taken to hospital as she was bleeding profusely.
“We are lucky to be alive,” said Yolandi, who was full of praise for the CCPO who checked up on the family the following day.
“If they had been armed, it would have been a different story. We hit, kicked and screamed as we fought them off. It was the most vicious and brutal attack. They had no fear. They crashed through the window right on top of us. It was absolute madness.”
Yolandi has only just recovered from her shooting ordeal in February. She was shot in the neck and back of the head at point blank range. She spent six weeks in St Augustine’s Hospital, two in ICU, and six weeks in rehab.
“I just want 2016 to end,” said Yolandi. “It has been such a traumatic year for me.”
Read about Yolandi’s previous shooting incident here:
BREAKING NEWS: One dead in Doonside shooting
UPDATE: Doonside shooting leaves three dead
UPDATE: Doonside shooting victims named
UPDATE: Police probe Doonside shooting carnage
Update: Woman survives surgery after shooting
Shooting survivor reclaims her life
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