An Inchanga couple who say they have experienced 20 home invasions are now prepared to "fight to the death".
|||Durban - An Inchanga couple who said they had experienced about 20 home invasions over the past 15 years are now prepared to “fight to the death”.
The last straw for Cathy and David Raysdors came on Thursday when an intruder tried to attack David with an electric saw.
David believed the suspect would have hacked his skull with the circular saw had it not fallen out of his hands.
Cathy, 53, who later confronted one of the men, who was arrested, said she had come home to find her 60-year-old husband scratched and bruised.
He had been doing plumbing work outside at the time.
Said David: “I saw a guy stretching his hand towards my tool box and when he saw me he picked up a circular saw and ran towards me.”
He said the man swung the heavy tool back, ready to strike him but it fell out of his hands because of the weight.
“We struggled and rolled down a bank. I landed on top of him and caught him by the throat.”
David said the man then tried to call for his friend who had been standing on the perimeter of the house as a “lookout”.
With David “strangling” him, his call for help was faint, but David was still afraid of being blindsided by the accomplice.
“I loosened my grip to check for the other guy and he pushed up and ran away,” he said.
Cathy said: “As I was phoning the police and SA CAN (a community action network), I saw them casually walking on the railway, looking back every now and then. I said to my husband, ‘I am going to catch this bas***d’,” she said.
The couple followed the men by car and confronted them at the nearby train station.
“As I walked up to them, the guy saw my husband behind me and said, ‘It wasn’t me’, before I even said anything, then took off running.”
SA CAN founder, Brian Jones, said police arrested one of the men.
“He looked surprised, but I am beyond scared,” Cathy said.
“I was so angry I slapped him, right there in the van. I’m actually in a very bad place at the moment. I’m not scared of them anymore. I’m not going to allow them to rule my life anymore.”
Police spokesman, Captain Thulani Zwane, confirmed the arrest and incident.
After surviving about 20 home invasions, the Raysdors said they were prepared to “fight to the death”.
“The only way out is to take him (the perpetrator) out,” said Cathy. “This is my country too. Why am I not entitled to live happy and safe? Why can’t we live in peace?”
Cathy said her husband’s attacker had left his shoes behind. “I’m going to nail them on my fence, and put a sign out reading ‘one down’ to warn them,” she said.
In another incident, a Manor Gardens man who tried to fight back when three armed men invaded his home at the weekend, died last night.
Bheki Makaula, 32, was shot in the stomach after attempting to run for help while the robbers ransacked the bedrooms.
Speaking to the Daily News yesterday, his distraught mother, who did not want to be named, said her son had been in the lounge with his 16-year-old son and friends on Saturday evening.
“A boy who helps us with driving came, pushed by three men with guns to his head,” she said.
The men held the occupants at gunpoint while they stole their cellphones and raided the house.
“When they went to the bedroom, my son must have tried something and they shot him,” she said.
The robbers fled in the family’s Audi A4 which was later recovered in uMlazi.
Zwane said a case of house robbery and attempted murder was being investigated by Mayville police.
Daily News