NELSPRUIT - In yet another brazen Steiltes burglary, a robber’s bad aim proved to be his victim’s salvation. But police are still baffled about how the burglars succeeded in making an escape.
Mr Victor Picôto, owner of Nashua Nelspruit, was lucky to escape serious injury after one of the men who broke into his home  hurled a 10mm burglar bar he had removed from the window at him, to stop him from arming himself.
The incident, which had scores of police officials, security officers and Mr Albert Gryvenstein of the Bossie’s Justice Fund cordon off all entrances and exits to Steiltes, occurred at around 20:40 when Picôto, his wife Ms Alida Picôto and her mother (also Alida) returned from an evening out.
Picôto entered the yard where he found his beloved dog Spike - one of four - barking up a storm. "I immediately sensed something was wrong and told my wife someone had poisoned Spike," Picôto told Lowvelder at his home on Monday.
He followed the dog to a corner in the yard where he believed more burglars stood waiting for the loot to be  passed on to them over the wall.
However, Spike  kept returning to the same spot and Picôto followed him there  three times, when he bumped into one of the burglars who was half-way out of his TV room’s window with a huge flat-screen plasma TV to the value of R16 000.
He immediately started running to the back door with the burglar hot on his heels, to warn his wife who had since entered the house, of the impending danger.
"I just heard a loud bang and saw my hand was bleeding," Picôto, who thought he had been shot, told the paper. The loud bang was caused by the burglar bar which the robber had hurled towards him in an effort to stop him in his tracks.
"The bar shattered a plastic dog kennel next to the back door and pieces of it penetrated the skin on my hand," he said adding that the blow was so violent that "the rod would have caused severe injury,
had his aim been better".
At the same time, Ms Picôto entered the TV room where she saw the second burglar exiting the house with the gigantic flat screen in his arms.
"The aggressive one simply turned around and assisted his criminal friend with  lifting it over the wall where someone must have waited with a getaway car," Picôto surmises.
Hi-Tech Security was on the scene within two minutes of receiving the panic alert which was activated by his wife when her husband shouted to her that they were being shot at.
Picôto, who had  then been  armed himself, fired a single shot and the men simply vanished into the night.
A three-hour search ensued - with the assistance of the police helicopter, K9 unit, seasoned detectives, security officers of both Hi-Tech and J&M and  Gryvenstein  - to no avail.
However, the shot fired by  Picôto woke the neighbourhood and soon a number of residents joined in the search.
A Suiderkruis Street resident saw two men individually armed with a bolt-cutter and butcher knife, running down Enos Mabuza Drive.
The eyewitness is the neighbour of
Mr Gerhard Nortjé, who was stabbed and almost gutted during an attack in Steiltes exactly one week earlier. Little did he know that the same fate would befall yet another neighbour of his, hours after the attack on Picôto, in the second Suiderkruis Street break-in in a week.
"I want to thank the security services, police and everyone who helped in the search for the burglars, from the bottom of my heart," Picôto said appreciatively. "I thank God that I drove slowly and arrived second," a still shaken
 Ms Picôto said while making her mother a sandwich in the kitchen. "It may very well have been different," she sighed.