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Elderly farmer terrorised
16/07/2007 22:55 - (SA)
Dries Liebenberg, Beeld
Durban - "Boil the kettle!"
That's what a gang of robbers told an elderly farmer because they were dissatisfied with the amount of money he'd given them.
They then put a tie round his neck and dragged him, bleeding, through his house.
The three attackers luckily changed their minds about pouring boiling water on David Southey, 79, and instead tied him up with ropes and barbed wire in his house on the farm Winterfold between Kokstad and Matatiele.
About five hours after the attack on Southey in the Cedarville area , his farmworkers were able to get him to his son's farm on an open tractor.
Robbers had been watching
Southey's daughter-in-law Jenny Southey said the attack was a big shock to all the farmers in the district.
The attack was the second in two days on Southey snr, giving the impression that the robbers had been watching him.
His wife Winnifred is on a visit to Britain at present and family members stayed with him until Thursday. Jenny said that after the family left on Thursday, there was an attempted break-in at the house that same night.
Her husband Martin went to see what was wrong after receiving a phone call from his father about a crashing noise that had woken him up.
They discovered that someone had broken a glass door at the well-secured home.
Police spokesperson Zandra Hechter said that when Southey went to close the farm gate as he did every evening, he was attacked.
Forced Southey to open the safe
Three men were hiding in the long grass. They stabbed him in the back and his hand before throwing him onto the back of the bakkie and driving to the homestead, Jenny said.
They forced Southey to open the safe at the house.
They took seven firearms, jewellery and cash before tying him up, cutting the telephone line and driving off in his bakkie.
Jenny said Southey managed to free himself after hours of struggling and went to ask nearby farmworkers to help him.
The workers took him on the tractor in the cold, in a state of shock, to his son Martin's farm. He was taken from there to Kokstad Hospital.
Southey snr. was reported to be in a stable condition.
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