How a robber got the chop .
A robber got more than he bargained for when he tried to attack this karate teacher!
WHEN the would-be robber walked up to her car in rushhour traffic, pointed a gun at her and said, “I’m going to shoot you,” he had no idea he’d picked the wrong person to mess with. Petra Smit (54), the woman at the wheel, had only one thought and it was for the robber: “You’re going to bleed today.”
Petra, a mother of three, holds a fourth dan black belt in karate and a black belt in Krav Maga, a military self-defence discipline developed for the Israeli armed forces. She also teaches karate at the dojo (training room) she and husband Deon (55) built in their backyard. There was no way this pint-size powerhouse was going to sit back and be attacked.
Petra has just got home from work and is already in her karate uniform when we arrive to find out about the incident that’s made her the talk of the town.
She’s bellowing instructions at her karate students and her young charges dutifully obey.
“She’s so small,” one of the watching parents remark. “It’s scary what she can do.”
When we finally sit down to chat, Petra, deputy director of finance for the corporate services department in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, tells us she’s usually aware of her surround- ings when she’s driving.
But that morning Petra who’s from Roodepoort, Gauteng, was preoccupied with her PhD research in business administration. “I had a touch of flu and my window was open a bit,” she recalls.
The traffic light was red and a guy appeared out of nowhere, his accomplice standing behind him to shield him from other motorists. As she moved to close her window she heard five chilling words – “I’m going to shoot you.”
That’s when she saw the pistol glinting in the early morning light. Petra remained calm – all she could see was her attacker’s nose.
“In my mind I was saying, ‘Today you’re going to bleed’,” she says. “Then I pressed hard on my hooter and started punching this guy. When I gave him the first punch I could feel the impact of his nose going into his face.”
By now other motorists were honking their horns an the guys turned and fled.
The police didn’t catch them but they did find a pistol near the scene.
Petra’s actions made her a heroine among many South Africans fed up with crime.
PETRA was 25 when she fell in love with karate and it took her five years to get her first black belt.
But her passion was almost snatched away in a terrible motorbike accident eight years ago when a car hit her Harley- Davidson at about 160 km/h.
She broke her femur in three places as well as her knee, hip and wrist.
“I was told I’d never walk again,” she recalls. “My husband had to dress and bath me for months.”
Yet a wheelchair didn’t stop her going to the dojo. After painstaking rehabilitation she’d recovered enough and she began taking part in competitions again.
In 2014 Petra took part in the world championships in Italy and came home with one gold, two silver and two bronze medals.
Karate runs in the family. Deon has a second dan black belt, their sons, Hannes (25) and Kelvin (23), are blackbelt holders too and daughter Suné (22) has a purple belt.
“My training saved my life,” Petra says. “When I phoned my husband to tell him what happened his response was, ‘How badly is the guy hurt?’ ”