A Paarl wine farmer was attacked last Wednesday evening in a farmhouse on the slopes of Paarl Mountain and held prisoner by robbers for hours.
Mary-Lou Nash from Renosterkop farm in the Agter-Paarl, who appeared in the previous season of Boer Soek ’n Vrou, this week told Paarl Post of her harrowing experience.
Mary-Lou said that from 1995 when they moved onto the farm, she and her family led a peaceful life. But in 2016 things started to change fast.
First her elderly father and his wife where attacked and tied up and robbed one evening in 2016. Later that year, evidently the same group attacked tenants on the farm.
Soon after this Mary-Lou and her two daughters moved to Central Paarl as they did not feel safe on the farm anymore.
This year her daughters moved on to Stellenbosch University and so Mary-Lou decided to move back to the farm to be closer to her work and elderly father.
But she had barely moved back onto the farm when the same group paid her a visit last week.
“I was already in bed with doors and windows bolted and the alarm on when I heard a noise outside and thought it was my dad’s dog Sparky coming for a sleepover.
“And this is where I made my crucial mistake. I disarmed my house to peak out of my bedroom door to see if it was Sparky scratching at the door. That’s all it took to be shocked by the noise of a massive rock coming through my window followed by four black men armed with knives.
“I had a phone in my hand and a panic button on the wall, but with the surprise attack I was rendered useless. My hands and legs were bound while they took their time stripping my house of my past.
“All along I pleaded, looking at the floor, that they don’t hurt me.
“I was terrified – the one attacker was supposed to be keeping an eye on me. He took me to the living room and ordered me to lie on the coffee table. After this he threw a heavy blanket over me and told me to sleep. It was impossible. I was terrified of their next move and also struggled to breathe under the blanket.”
Meanwhile, the men ransacked the house for valuables and Mary-Lou said they took their time.
About two hours later they left the farmhouse with various electronic items, jewellery, cash and clothes.
Shortly after the attackers left the premises, Mary-Lou managed to wrestle herself free and went to find help. Her hands were still tied and in a panic she ran to the R44 to seek help. She was afraid that her attackers were still hiding on the farm.
When she got to the R44 after midnight she tried to stop passing cars to help her, but no one wanted to stop for her, even though they could clearly see that her hands were tied.
“After some time, a police vehicle drove by. It did stop a little further and then made a u-turn in my direction.
“I was still terrified and wondered if these people would be safe.”
However, the two police officers from Cape Town, rushed to her aid and after she told her story they called in police reinforcements and went to the scene of the crime.
“I am not the first one to be hit up by these four, and I will not be the last. They are professional, meticulous, and have managed to escape capture since they started their tirade in 2016. Burglary is their business, and they are getting rich from it. These are not farm attacks.
They are purely hitting on a lot of farms because we are soft targets, especially Suid- Agter Paarl as there are so many choices of escape routes.”
Mary-Lou pleads to the broader public to remain vigilant, and to never come out of your safe area when you hear a noise, and don’t fight back: “These guys have used their crowbar, knives and guns on people.
“My future is now completely up in the air after such a traumatic experience.”
Several similar attacks have occurred in the past in this area.
It is suspected that the attacks are carried out by an organized crime syndicate that has been responsible for numerous similar attacks here.
The nearby owner of Fairview estate, Charles Back, was also assaulted in a similar incident four years ago.
No one has yet been arrested for these attacks.
