Gonubie woman, 79, hit in face with rock while driving

AN EAST London pensioner is recovering in hospital following facial surgery after she was hit with a rock in the face during a robbery while driving in Gonubie this week.

Jeanette Welsh, 79, had to have facial surgery performed on her at the Life St Dominic’s Hospital.

The right side of her face had to be reconstructed by a maxillofacial surgeon after her jaw and cheekbones were broken in the brutal assault.

Speaking from her hospital bed yesterday, Welsh, said she could not remember anything about the attack which occurred at 12.30pm on Monday after she dropped her domestic helper off at the edge of Mzamomhle.

“I was driving out [of the access road to Mzamomhle] towards Gullsway Road and I slowed down because there was a speed bump. I don’t remember seeing anybody on the road or anything suspicious.

“I must have blacked out when I was hit because the next thing I knew I was waking up and there was glass all over the place.

“I had driven into a barrier on the side of the road. I was stunned,” she recalled.

Welsh said she instinctively drove away from the scene and back home.

“My key was still in the ignition but the remote attached to it was stolen.

“I could feel something was wrong with my face and when I touched it, I saw the blood,” the pensioner said.

When Welsh, who lives alone in a complex, arrived home a few minutes later, a concerned neighbour helped her get to the doctor and then to hospital.

“We found a pumpkin-sized rock or lump of cement in my car and my bag had been stolen from the passenger seat. I could have been dead. I was very, very fortunate that my brain was not affected, but I had a broken jaw, my cheekbone had to be boosted back into place and my eye was swollen shut. I can’t chew food now,” Welsh said.

With 15 steri-strips stapling her split skin together, bruising trailing down the side of her face and onto her chest and her eye weeping and disfigured, Welsh was nevertheless in good spirits when the Saturday Dispatch paid her a visit.

“I am fed up because now I have to replace my bank cards, driver’s licence and ID book,” she said.

Her son Ian Welsh, who lives in Hogsback, said his mother would lay a charge with the police once she was discharged from hospital. — barbarah@dispatch.co.za