The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Saturday, September 22, 1991 — A 4-year-old Entumbane girl was snatched from a room where she was sleeping with five other people by an unidentified man who later raped her less than 200 metres away from her home on Thursday night.

The incident took place at about 11PM, according to the girl’s grandmother who came face-to-face with the man outside the room in which her granddaughter was sleeping. He held the girl under his arm and the woman did not realise then that the child was her granddaughter, she said.

Police in Bulawayo yesterday confirmed the incident and said the matter was being treated as rape and investigations were under way.

Relating her granddaughter’s ordeal, the grandmother said she was awakened by a consistent howling sound similar to that made by a possessed person and she went to investigate while her husband dressed up.

“When I opened the door, I met the man standing outside the entrance to the spare bedroom which opens outwards and I thought he was a wizard and started crying for help,’’ she said.

She said the man started to run. He jumped over the durawall around the house and into the next yard with her husband in hot pursuit but he failed to catch up with him.

The distraught grandmother said that on her husband’s return, it was then discovered that her four-year-old granddaughter was missing but they were puzzled over how the man had entered the locked room, snatched the girl and left the door locked without disturbing the other occupants.

“The man was putting on a black jacket with double vents and grey trousers, was short with a big head and unkempt hair,’’ she said.

Some neighbours had found the girl about 200m from the house and less than two metres from another house. The child had been sexually abused and was bleeding.