Night of hell for Egoli star
2009-07-02 10:05
Philip de Bruin
Cape Town - A terrified actor and singer, Izak Davel, and his fiancée hid behind locked doors of their house in Pretoria on Wednesday morning, praying quietly while a gang of robbers ransacked their house.
Davel, who first become known as the character Scab in M-Net's soapie Egoli, on Wednesday said the robbers probably thought no-one was home. This is the fourth break-in in the same house in two years.
"I had a shifting spanner in my hand as I stood behind the locked bedroom door, and started praying. I couldn't pray out loud because I was afraid the robbers would hear me and realise in which room we were."
"I locked Mericke (de Wilde, his fiancée) in the bedroom's bathroom, while I waited behind the locked bedroom door."
"My biggest fear was that they would find us and hurt Mericke. I was absolutely terrified."
The whole drama started at about 04:15 on Wednesday morning when the alarm went off.
15 minutes of hell
The robbers presumably first cut through the iron pole fencing which surrounds the house, and then cut through the electric fencing. They then broke a large, thick glass door on the stoep "with something very heavy".
On Wednesday, De Wilde related that when the alarm went off, Davel came from his room to hers and locked her in the bathroom. Then he locked the bedroom door.
"All I could do was to sit in the bathroom and pray. I just kept on praying. I could hear them fiddling and pulling at the bedroom door's handle, and I was so afraid Izak might be killed. With the loud alarm noise I couldn't really hear what was going on. I was petrified.
"It was 15 minutes of hell before the security company showed up," she said.
According to Davel, the security guards came to the bedroom window and told them the robbers had gone and they could come out.
The robbers got away with De Wilde's handbag - with all her personal documents - and a laptop. They tried to take the DVD player but couldn't get the wires unravelled.
"The fear has gone, but now I'm furious. How can people terrorise you in your own home like that?" a clearly upset Davel said on Wednesday.
- Beeld