A police reservist caught a suspected serial housebreaker "red-handed" trying to rob his home as his family slept.
|||Cape Town - A crime writer and police reservist caught a suspected serial housebreaker “red-handed” trying to rob his Mowbray home on Thursday as his family slept.
Andrew Brown said he awoke to noise and saw a man standing outside his door. Brown had his personal firearm with him.
“I cocked my gun but I heard another noise inside the house. It came from the study. I went there and there was this guy going through my things,” Brown said.
He said the man appeared to be high and had a tik pipe in his pocket.
“He was jumping all over the place. I was worried that he was trying to come at me.
“Later I realised that he was trying to get to his knife that he had left on the table when he was searching through my things.
“I have been a police officer for 13 years and face these situations regularly and it is quite different when it happens to you. You have a wife and kids at home. It was quite frightening,” Brown said.
He said there had been a number of burglaries in Mowbray and Rondebosch. Police believed the man, from Hanover Park and his accomplice, who got away, were responsible for some of them, Brown said. A knife and a screwdriver were confiscated.
Police spokesman Andre Traut said:
“He was caught red-handed breaking into the reservist’s home. He is being detained at the Mowbray police station,” he said.
He said they were investigating whether the man had been involved in other acts of housebreaking in the area. The man will appear in Wynberg Magistrate’s Court on a housebreaking charge, Traut said.
Meanwhile, police arrested a man for possession of two illegal firearms in Delft yesterday. Traut said officers on patrol arrested the man after they saw him throw the guns on a roof when police spotted him. They took two 9mm Z88 pistols from him.
“One pistol had 15 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber ready to fire. The other firearm had 10 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber also ready to fire.
The serial numbers of both firearms were filed off. The suspect is detained until he is due in court,” Traut said.
xolani.koyana@inl.co.za
Cape Times