Rev Sampie Niemand

Rev Sampie Niemand, 71, Corrie du Plooy, 65, and wives
in life-death struggle with machete-armed attacker, Hazyview

2011-07-14 Ds. Sampie Niemand: “If that man had gotten lose, we would all have been goodbye’. Pictures: Craig Nieuwenhuizen, Beeld newspaper .. Journalist Hilda Fourie writes in Beeld that Rev Sampie Nieman, of the community-church in Pierre van Ryneveld Centurion – and the chairman of the policing-community forum there – fought a life-death battle with a black man with a long, homemade knife together his brother-inlaw Corrie du Plooy, their wives and a neighbour.

They believe that they would all have been dead if the knifeman got lose. They managed to deliver him unscathed,trussed up hand-and-foot, to the local police. A second man escaped but was chased down by police several farms away from the rural retreat. The holiday-makers cut short the family vacation after the horrific incident at the rural holiday-resort. The black man was photographed while everyone was waiting for the police to arrive. Note: the blood on the man’s shirt came from Rev Niemand’s brother in law Corrie du Plooy, 65, who received several fierce cuts during the struggle. They were on a week-long vacation at the Hazeyview Cabanas holiday resort.

The struggle started on Tuesday just after midnight when Mr Du Plooy and wife Rina, 66, woke up when two black men climbed into their bathroom-window.They shone cellphone-light into Mr Du Plooy’s eyes: the Afrikaner holiday-maker grabbed one of the two men and started yelling: ‘I’ve got him, I’ve got him’.The other man ran from the backdoor. The rest of the family woke up. “We saw that this captured man had a homemade long-bladed knife with him. We later measured it at 45,72cm. What would a man be doing with a long knife, he was certainly not planning to rob us, he was planning to kill us all,’ said Du Plooy.

The family ‘descended like tigers’ on the man. It was a fight for our lives because if he’d gotten lose he would have slashed all of us to death’.As it was Mr Du Plooy sustained a deep cut to an arm. Rev Niemand and the two women grabbed the knifeman’s arms and legs but he got lose.Mr Du Plooy was then thrown with a chair and slashed several times with a knife. Meanwhile the racket woke up a neighbour called Gert who also rushed in to help.

Finally Mr du Plooy managed to grab the machete from the attacker’s hand while the man was breaking a window trying to flee – but ran into the sliding door instead.Then the holiday-makers trussed him up hands-and-feet, very thoroughly, while awaiting the police.SAPS lt-col |Leonard Hlathi of Mpumalanga confired that the citizen-arrested man was handed to the police intact – and that they later arrested a second man on a nearby farm.

http://www.beeld.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Dominee-en-familie-pak-rower-20110713