Hands up or you are Dead!

An Austrian pistol, similar to the one I got from the robbers

Wednesday 27 October, started like any other dreary autumn day, grey, cold and wet. It is only the trees outside that are shading of their leaves that brighten up the environment with their soon to fall down colourful leaves. Like all working days, I woke up and sat behind my computer to complete some article I was doing for ex Ponto, a magazine for immigrant journalists in Holland.

By the end of day, I found myself alone in the house. My wife had gone to pick our small boy who had earlier gone visiting. So I prepared dinner for us all. One of the boys came back and we had dinner together at around 8.00pm. After dinner, I went to the living room to watch a movie. Around 8.30 pm, the doorbell rang. We all assumed it was my wife and son.

It was two men. They pushed my son inside and pointed a pistol at him. They asked him how many people were at home and he told them only the two of us. They came to the living room and put both my son and myself at gunpoint and ordered us not to move! The bigger of the two ran upstairs.

I was seething with anger, wondering why these two thugs came to disturb our peace! I don’t know where I got the strength and the inspiration to jump on the armed thug. I hit the arm holding the pistol with my left hand and used the right to point the gun at the ceiling. Then the struggle for the gun started. My weight and anger assisted me to wrench the gun from his hands. The hunter became the hunted!

I pointed the gun at him and asked him to kneel on the floor. I threatened to shoot him if he moved. I asked my son to go for the thug upstairs and ask him to hurry down if he wanted to see his co thug alive! I tested my shooting skills by pointing on the ground and pulling the trigger…there was a click, but nothing came out. The thug saw it and he got up to run away. We struggled in the entrance hall the 4 of us. I managed to corner the bigger of the two and asked him to lie down. He complied and asked us to forgive him and that he was sorry. When he noticed his friend fleeing, he also gained courage and they fled. We chased them and managed to catch one of them. As we were pulling him inside the house to call the police, his friend ran back and pulled him from us.

He however left his jacket, one glove and glasses. We called the police. My wife came in a few minutes after they were gone, found me holding a gun and my son speaking hurriedly on the phone. She was confused and we briefly explained to her. Shortly afterwards, the police came in. They made a ring around our house, asked me and my son to go to the police to make statements and told my wife to stay away for at least 2 hours as their forensic team went through our house.

I was asked if I had been in the forces or police, when I answered in negative, they praised me for the act of disarming the robbers, but advised that it was risky and that it is better to follow orders of an armed person.

The next day, some neighbours came to commiserate with us and find out if there was anything they could do for us. They told us, the police had been to them to find out if they had seen any suspicious people in the neighbourhood.

We were advised to see a psychologist in case the incident traumatized us. Personally, I got scared only after the police had taken us back home that night. The pistol, we were told was loaded but not cocked!