Sisters, teen nephew beaten in violent two-hour Penal home invasion

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Ter­ror un­fold­ed in­side a Pe­nal home af­ter four masked men stormed the prop­er­ty and bru­talised two sis­ters, ages 40 and 57, along with their 14-year-old nephew, dur­ing a near­ly two-hour home in­va­sion.

The vic­tims were beat­en with cut­lass­es and broom­sticks, while the at­tack­ers ran­sacked the house and threat­ened to kill them.

The ban­dits al­so poi­soned the fam­i­ly’s pet dog, as well as a neigh­bour’s dog.

Still trau­ma­tised, the younger sis­ter, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said she re­tired to bed around 8.30 pm, and about three hours lat­er she was awok­en by her sis­ter’s ter­ri­fy­ing screams.

As she ran to her sis­ter’s aid, she en­coun­tered two masked cut­lass-wield­ing ban­dits who forced her in­to her sis­ter’s room.

They bound them, along with her nephew, with duct tape as they de­mand­ed mon­ey.

The ban­dits in­sist­ed that the old­er sis­ter had got­ten $450,000 at work.

De­spite re­peat­ed­ly claim­ing that this was not true, the ban­dits con­tin­ued beat­ing them dur­ing the hour and a half they held them cap­tive and al­so threat­ened to shoot them.

She said, “Dur­ing this time, you know, we were threat­ened. They put a gun to my sis­ter’s head and told her that, you know, you have five sec­onds to tell us where the mon­ey was. They con­tin­ued to beat us.

“They brought my nephew in­to the room to­geth­er, where they beat him re­al­ly bad. It was re­al­ly, re­al­ly trau­ma­tis­ing.”

She said the boy, a Form Three stu­dent, was al­so kicked in the head.

“They took out some pic­ture frames and break it on our backs. Took broom, beat us. They lit­er­al­ly beat us re­al­ly bad.”

She re­called think­ing that they were go­ing to die.

“I hon­est­ly thought that I was go­ing to die. Be­cause I am see­ing a gun, you know, and he’s say­ing that, you know, tonight you all will die. All I could think about was that I was go­ing to die. That was all. I couldn’t think about noth­ing else. This was re­al­ly, re­al­ly trau­ma­tis­ing. Nev­er, ever thought that it would have hit home.”

She said one of the ban­dits was speak­ing to some­one on the phone. She be­lieves that they were tar­get­ed be­cause they knew their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

De­spite the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion, she said they nev­er imag­ined they would be­come vic­tims them­selves. How­ev­er, she be­lieves no crime-fight­ing mea­sure can ful­ly solve the prob­lem, as peo­ple have be­come un­com­pas­sion­ate and evil.

“To be hon­est, noth­ing can re­al­ly help ex­cept God be­cause they are like dev­ils walk­ing on the earth, I’m telling you. Be­cause if you’re go­ing to watch a woman and beat her like that, some­thing is def­i­nite­ly wrong with you. You re­al­ly need God. You re­al­ly need the love of God in your heart to change. I am telling you be­cause no way you could watch some­body and do some­body that or even watch a dog who didn’t even do you any­thing and poi­son a dog like that. Some­thing is def­i­nite­ly wrong with you. You’re re­al­ly not hu­man.” She said their Husky was five years old.

Thank­ful to be alive, she said they were “help­less” through­out the or­deal, and even now they are fear­ful that the at­tack­ers would re­turn.

The ban­dits stole their mon­ey, jew­ellery, and phones val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50,000, as well as their Nis­san B15.

The po­lice re­cov­ered the car at Hag­gard Trace, Pe­nal Rock Road.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter are on­go­ing.