TASNEEM HASSAN
When Evita Daniels, 24, saw a man outside her kitchen window trying to knock the glass out of the wooden frame, she screamed. But instead of running away, the man looked at her and then continued trying to get inside.
It was a Wednesday morning, June 22, about 8am, and Ms Daniels was home alone at the Frankfort Street house in Parow after seeing her cousin off to school
Ms Daniels had been lying on her bed when she heard the scratching sounds.
When she went to investigate, she saw the man in the lane next to the house, trying to remove the pane. She was even more scared when the man didn’t run after she screamed.
“At this point, I knew this man didn’t care. All he wanted to do was get into the house. He wanted more than to just break in,” she said. Ms Daniels said she called the Parow police sector van, but there was no answer.
Hysterical, she started screaming on the phone pretending to be talking to the police.
The ruse worked. When she peeped through a glass panel in the front door, she spotted two men leaving the property. It scared her though that they didn’t appear to be in any hurry.
“They just walked away like they did nothing and like they are scared of nobody.”
She said her boyfriend drives down Frankfort Street every day on his way to work, but that morning he had not driven by yet.
“This incident happened before 8.22am that day. At 8.22am, I messaged my boyfriend and he was in Frankfort Street, but at the top of Voortrekker Road. By the time he got to the house, like a minute later, the men were gone. I think they might have been with a car,” said Ms Daniels.
Three weeks after the attempted break-in, she still jumps at every sound she hears in the house.
The day before Ms Daniels saw the man at the window, some men tried to break into her neighbour’s house.
Stiaan Goosen had returned from a night shift, at about 7am, on Tuesday June 21, seen his wife and children off to work and school and then gone to take a nap.
At 9.45am, a loud knock on the front door woke him.
He peeped through the lounge window and saw three men at the door, but they didn’t see him.
When Mr Goosen didn’t answer the door, one of the men ran to a gold Renault to fetch a bolt cutter.
Mr Goosen said a woman was waiting in the car.
Armed with the bolt cutter, the three set to work on the front gate.
That’s when Mr Goosen shouted and they ran away, jumping into the car which sped off.
The father of two daughters is worried about his family’s safety.
“I have been living in this house since I was in primary school. I grew up here and things were never like this before,” he said.
He didn’t open a case, but called the police sector van to report what had happened and ask for more visible policing in the area.
Northern News contacted Parow police station on Thursday July 7 for comment, but they had still no responded by the time this edition went to print on Monday July 11.