Both Afrikaner females were hit with an unknown sharp object and the grip of a handgun for almost 30 minutes.
One of the Afrikaner boys suddenly became aware that there were intruders in his home and called all the children together and urged them to keep quiet...He managed to lead the group of teenagers and younger children to safety, and hid them so well that the parents momentarily thought they had been kidnapped...
GENOCIDE VICTIMS: Father Jaco with his two boys, Jayden & C.J
Photo: C.J. and his brother Jayden
Photo: Cj and his father Jaco
Teen hero leads friends from harm
BRONDAL – “You said I would not learn anything from playing Call of Duty: Black Ops,” 14-year-old CJ Bekker joked with his parents after his heroics when they fell prey to a farm attack on Saturday night.
He managed to lead a group of teenagers and younger children to safety, and hid them so well that the parents momentarily thought they had been kidnapped.
Realising that the outcome might have been very different, his father, Mr Jaco Bekker fought back the tears while he spoke of the families’ ordeal. “My life stopped for 90 minutes,” he said. He was on a hunting trip in Douglas at the time. His wife, Liezl and Ms Caroline van Staden bore the brunt of the attack. Caroline’s husband, Jon-Jon, was on a fishing trip in Mozambique. She and their children were staying at the Bekkers for the night.
Liezl was too traumatised to speak to Lowvelder and Jaco relayed how three armed men somehow entered the electric-fenced premises around 21:30 on Saturday. The suspects, of whom only one wore a balaclava, overpowered the women and demanded cash and weapons.
Both females were hit with an unknown sharp object and the grip of a handgun for almost 30 minutes. Unaware of the unfolding nightmare, CJ and the four Van Staden brothers were playing elsewhere in the house.
A brave CJ, who is the eldest, suddenly became aware that there were intruders in his home and called all the children together and urged them to keep quiet. Jayden (10), the Bekkers’ youngest son, was already asleep. CJ carefully placed him under the bed and camouflaged him with pillows and blankets.
He remained level-headed and made a plan. CJ smuggled the Van Staden boys – Daniel, Callum, Johnny and Liam (two years old) – out through a bathroom window. “The bathtub was filled with water, and CJ showed immense strength when he threw the other boys through the open bathroom window, in an attempt to keep them dry,” said Jaco.He also climbed through the window and quietly took the boys to a storeroom, approximately 100 metres from the house. Here they crawled under a trailer and hid, motionless and dead quiet.
CJ lay flat on his stomach, keeping guard over the boys.
Meanwhile, Liezl managed to press the panic button, sounding the alarm and scaring off the attackers. They fled on foot with a television, iPads, jewels and cellphones. Covered in blood, the two women ran to Liezl’s sister-in-law’s residence, which is located about 80 metres away.
After phoning for help, various security companies including J&M Security and Bossies Community Justice, as well as farmers from the area, came to their aid. Eighteen-year-old Delano and 16-year-old Landou van Rooyen, CJ’s cousins, assisted in looking for the suspects. They followed their tracks, but the three men were gone.
Unaware that CJ and the boys were hiding in the storeroom, Liezl and Caroline assumed they had been kidnapped by the attackers. They frantically started to look for them in and around the house and found Jayden, still asleep under his bed and unaware of what happened. CJ and the boys were found in the storeroom an hour later. “Numerous people walked past them, but CJ didn’t know who it was and kept the boys quiet,” his dad said.
The worst part was to helplessly sit on a farm almost 1 000 kilometres away, not able to help my family in danger,” Jaco said. He left Douglas just after midnight and joined his family almost 12 hours later. He was relieved to see that his family was safe and that nobody was seriously injured.
“It could have been much worse,” he said. Both families underwent trauma counselling yesterday. Jaco said it was going to be a long road to recovery, but added that his wife is strong and that even after the attack, she insisted on staying on the farm. “My son is a true hero and he made me very proud. He knows exactly where I keep my weapons, and he shoots exceptionally well, but decided not to follow that route. He asked me if he did the right thing, after which I told him he couldn’t have handled it any better,” he said, trying to hold back the tears.
Jaco, a member of Father’s Ground, thanked this organisation, the community and the various security companies for their quick response and support.
http://lowvelder.co.za/337658/brondal-attack/
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