2009-10-09 09:46 - Die Beeld
Elaine Cahill, who was trampled on and choked by robbers who attacked her at her parents’ smallholding outside Pretoria.
Robbed At Gunpoint
Pretoria - A physiotherapist from Centurion was attacked by a gang reportedly led by a Tshwane metro police officer on Thursday.The robbers trampled on her and choked her until she started vomiting blood and left her for dead, but she managed to crawl about 50m to her neighbour’s house for help.
The metro police officer was apprehended in Pretoria West at around 11:30, nearly two hours after the attack on 25-year-old Elaine Cahill at her parents’ home on a smallholding in Raslouw.
On Thursday afternoon, with bruises clearly visible on her body, Cahill tearfully told how two men showed up at the house, pretending they wanted to look at an outbuilding which they wanted to rent.
Two more men showed up a while later.
Sprayed with pepper spray
Two of the men were wearing security guard uniforms.
Cahill took the men to the outbuilding leased out by her parents, Billy and Erna Cahill.
“Just as they were about to pay the deposit, they forced me to the ground and pressed a firearm against my head.
“They said they’d shoot me if I didn’t keep quiet. My hands were handcuffed and they tied my feet together with a belt. Next I was sprayed in the face with pepper spray and then they trampled on me.
“When they were done with that, they wrapped a jacket around my head and choked me with shoelaces,” Cahill related.
Vomited blood“I squeezed two fingers in between my throat and the shoelaces so I could breathe.
[Look at her picture and notice the ligature marks on her neck, because of the shoelaces.]
“They let go when I started vomiting blood. They left me like that to choke to death.”
According to Cahill, she didn’t move for a while, but then started crawling to her neighbour, Das Pillay’s house, about 50m away.
When she reached the wire fence between the two plots, she was able to free herself and climb over the fence.
In the meantime, the robbers had pressed a firearm against the domestic worker’s head and plundered the house.
They took medals, jewellery, a champagne bottle and a GPS among other things and shoved them in a sports bag.
Metro cop implicated by other suspects
Pillay phoned the police and a security service. When the robbers heard them approaching, they dropped the sports bag, shot the glass out of a sliding door and fled. They climbed over the wall.
Apparently the security service guards found the metro police officer at the crime scene. He showed them his identification and they let him go.
The metro police officer was implicated by one of two other suspects who were arrested near the crime scene. The police were then warned by radio to be on the lookout for him.
He was apprehended by members of the police’s flying squad at a scrap yard in Pretoria West.
Console Tleane, spokesperson for Tshwane’s department of community safety and liaison, said the metro police officer is believed to have used his service pistol during the incident. He allegedly also
supplied his partners with old Coin security company uniforms.
Tags: police, Savagery, TKB
Posted by gonville-bromhead in Bad News
