Farm wife Cecelia Steynberg, 51, shoots armed attacker in neck – Stormpan, Wesselsbron

2010-09-30 An armed black man – one of at least four home-invaders - who invaded a farm homestead near Wesselsbron was shot in the neck by the farmer’s wife – leaving the gunman injured and probably permanently disabled. Nothing was robbed. Two suspects are still at large.

Mrs Cecelia Steynberg (51) of the farm Stormpan woke up at around 3:00am from the loud barking of her little dogs inside. She fetched their firearm from the safe where, by law, it has to be locked up, and climbed back into bed. She said her husband Callie works in Kroonstad and she’s alone at home: so she make certain that she was able to protect herself.

After a while she heard the security-door inside the hallway leading to the bedroom being broken down. She tried to raise the farm-manager on her Farm-watch link’s two-way radio, but could not reach him: he apparently was busy at the chicken-house.

A black man then suddenly entered her bedroom, pointed a firearm at her and pulledthe trigger. However she was lucky: the attacker’s gun failed to fire so the man surged towards her while she fired off a shot which hit him in the neck. He was only a meter away from her when she shot the gunman, police said. She then rushed outside and fired off another warning shot to alert the farm-workers. Police and the local farm-watch were on the scene very quickly. SAPS sergeant Puleng Motsoeneng, said the injured man told them that there were three other men with him who were attacking the Steynberg homestead. They got in by cutting through the burglar-bars with a wirecutter. Police confiscated a firearm from him which had its serial-number filed off. They also found another person’s driver’s license and Mrs Steynberg’s car-keys on the injured man. He was admitted to Odendaalsrust hospital under police guard and then transferred to Welkom’s Bongani hospital.

Meanwhile local farmers teamed up with field-trackers and Agri-Free State’s intelligence chief Hennie Gerber and launched a massive search for the three other farm-attackers – arresting a second suspect later that morning who provided information to help track down the other two. However the two are still at large: they managed to get through the cordon put up near Odendaalsrust. .http://www.beeld.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Boervrou-skiet-inbreker-in-nek-20100929