By Jenna Etheridge of News24
Cape Town – “Get out of my house!” is what 70-year-old Angelina Youngman shouted as she stared into the eyes of three men in her passageway, their gun at the ready.
The action that followed probably left her intruders more shocked than she was.
“The man with the gun slowly walked towards me and put a gun to my face,” Youngman told News24 on Sunday, of the attack at her home in a Sir Lowry’s Pass security estate on Thursday.
“The nearest thing to me was the telephone directory so I grabbed it and hit the gun hand away from me. His hand moved but he didn’t drop the gun. It was like a movie.”
He hit her with the gun behind her left ear and she hit and punched him back.
“He was holding my head the whole time. I started fighting with him because why should he be in my house? It’s not right.”
Robbers surprised
She said his accomplices just stood and watched her from the sidelines.
“They were surprised because usually an old woman would say ‘Oh dear, oh dear’ and then they take a gun and rob you.”
Her domestic worker walked down the passage at some point and the man with the gun looked up.
Youngman used the distraction to flee the house.
Once in the backyard, she hooked her leg over a wall a few feet high and managed to get over.
Her first neighbour wasn’t home but other neighbours came to her assistance as she ran and shouted “guns, guns, guns!”
Worries about what happened to her domestic worker were put to rest when it emerged she had managed to lock herself in a room.
Decided to stay home
Youngman runs an injection moulding factory with her 84-year-old husband Derek.
She decided to stay home that day to clean up the garden after a storm. After pottering around, she walked inside the house and left the door open.
Once she had fled, the men grabbed her big television in the lounge and one of her satellite television cards.
The elderly lady said she was highly impressed by the response from Somerset West police and her neighbourhood watch.
The neighbourhood watch raised the alarm and police officers, paramedics and security officials from different companies responded in their numbers.
She said a portion of the perimeter fence appeared to have been bent backwards.
Possessions recovered
Although the men managed to get away, Youngman said her television was recovered in nearby bushes next to a pair of her attacker’s sneakers.
“He left behind his red takkies, you know, those shoes where they come right up past the ankle.”
Youngman said she was fine and had a bump and bruise where the gun hit her.
This was not the first close call with criminals. She said a man with a hacksaw mugged her outside her factory last year.
The grandmother was back at work and said her daughter and neighbours had been taking good care of them.
Asked on Sunday how she was holding up, she said: “Fine, but we can’t watch the Grand Prix today because they took our decoder card!”
News24
Source
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Granny-fights-off-housebreakers-with-telephone-book-20150726
