A young woman from Centurion probably saved her mother’s life when she pulled a burglar aside. The burglar tried to stab the older woman repeatedly with a knife.
Melissa Simpson’s (23) nails were lacerated in her efforts to save her mother, Suzette (43), from the burglar’s clutches.
Suzette woke up from sounds inside their home in Hennopspark, just after midnight on February 20, 2015.
“It was a loud jumping-sound and then I heard footsteps,” she said. “At first I thought it might have been the cat jumping off of something or my granddaughter waking up.”
Suzette said she walked down the corridor and briefly thought there might be someone in the house.
“I was quickly put at ease when I heard the apartment owner and her guests talking,” she said.
“There were a lot of vehicles outside and I did not think anyone would dare to break in where it was so crowded. And then, suddenly, a man jumped in front of me and swung a large knife several centimeters from my face.”
Suzette said she can’t remember what happened after that, but suspected that there was a struggle between them because she was extremely bruised after the attack.
“I know that I laid in the hallway on the floor, screaming and crawling backwards, trying to get away from the intruder,” she said.
“My cries must have woken Melissa, because she ran out of her room, addressed the man and pulled him with force off me,” said Suzette.
Suzette’s husband, Glenn (49), heard the two women screaming and scrambling. Most probably the thief got scared after hearing Glenn’s loud voice in reply.
The burglar jumped through the same window in the playroom from where he got access, and walked away nonchalantly.
“My husband fetched his gun and chased the intruder,” said Suzette.
“He grabbed the intruder by his pants but the intruder still managed to run away.”
Suzette, struggling to sleep since the attack, suspects that she was watched, and that the man waited until she fell asleep before he climbed through the window.
“He definitely planned to stab me,” she said.
A complaint was lodged with the Wierdabrug police station.
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