Home invasion horror

AWESTVILLE mother has told of the terror she felt when her husband and young son were forced to drive off with violent house robbers who had just held the family hostage for hours.

“I lost it,” Angela Stirk told The Mercury yesterday.

“I didn’t know if they were going to come back or how my son was going to react in the car, if he was going to keep quiet. I just screamed… I went crazy.”

About 30 minutes later, after dropping the men off in Clermont, Angela’s husband, Brandon, and their 11-year-old son returned unharmed.

“It was just a huge relief,” she said.

But then the horror of the whole ordeal started to set in.

Three heavily armed men – wearing balaclavas and gloves – stormed the family’s Roger Sishi Road home early on Tuesday.

Angela and Brandon had had friends over for a braai earlier. They had just finished cleaning up and were having tea on the verandah.

“They came out of nowhere,” Brandon said. “There was no time to sound an alarm.”

The men told the couple to keep quiet and co-operate.

They led them past their two sleeping sons and towards the main bedroom.

“I said to them, ‘You will not touch our children,’ and I closed their bedroom door,” Angela said.

The men demanded gold, money and safe keys. The couple obliged, but, in a state of panic, Angela fumbled and one of the men hit her over the head with a gun.

“I told them that I would find them (the keys) and just asked for them to give me a chance,” she said.

For three hours, the men ransacked their home.

Brandon said two of them were aggressive.

“It was a long ordeal,” Brandon said. “It wasn’t making sense to me, why they were taking so long.”

Eventually, Angela pleaded with them to leave. “I said, ‘Guys, you’ve got everything – we don’t have anything else,” and then they took me to the kids’ room.”

They had demanded that Angela drive them to Clermont.

The couple told them they could take the car, but said they would not drive.

Drive

“They said Angie must drive them, but I told them that wasn’t going to happen, that I would take them,” Brandon said. “After a while, they agreed but only if my son came with.

“They first wanted my youngest son, but I asked them not to wake him because he gets night terrors and would scream,” an emotional Angela said. “I told them to take my older son instead.” They woke the older boy up. “I told him he needed to go with his dad,” Angela said.

“I told him he was going to come back and everything was going to be okay.”

The men tied Angela and her younger son up and then they got into the car, with Brandon and the older boy.

One of the men sat with Brandon in the front and the other two with his son in the back.

“We sped off to Clermont and they told me to stop at a certain spot,” he said.

“Two of them jumped out and took the goods out the back. Then the other guy jumped out and then we left.”

Meanwhile, Angela had managed to untie herself and sound the alarm.

By the time Brandon and their older son returned, the police were at the scene.

The couple said yesterday it was all still very fresh, but while they did feel unsettled they had started “picking up the pieces”.

“I would never wish this on anyone else,” said Brandon.

Police spokesperson Colonel Thembeka Mbhele confirmed the incident.

“The complainant was at his place of residence sitting on his veranda when he was approached by three suspects,” she said.

“The suspects produced firearms and at gunpoint robbed him of cellphones, jewellery and cash.”

She said no arrests had been made, but a case of house robbery had been opened at the Westville police station for investigation.