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Durban – A recently widowed Waterfall woman’s two dogs were poisoned and she was attacked and robbed of her husband’s ashes before dawn on Tuesday.
Pauline Kleve, 73, knew something was wrong when she woke up and did not hear her two German shepherds, Ringo and Zach, barking outside.
Kleve’s daughter, Heather Goddard, said her mother opened the door at 5am to check on the dogs, but five armed men were waiting outside.
The gang gagged her, and dragged her inside and tied her up.
“The robbers threatened to kill her if she cried out for help. She was defenceless,” her emotional daughter said in an interview outside Kleve’s home on Tuesday where detectives were still working.
Kleve asked the men if her dogs were all right, but they ignored her and carried her to the bedroom where she was tied up with cables.
“Her dogs were the only ones who could have protected her. I do not know how people can treat an elderly person like this,” said Goddard.
The gang took the television set and kitchen appliances.
Then, to make the horror worse, they took the plastic urn which contained her late husband, Roger’s ashes. He died in February after battling cancer.
Kleve protested and told the men of the sentimental value of the urn, but they were unfazed.
“She begged them to leave the urn. It is the last memory we have of my dad. And now it has been taken away from us. How can people do this?” Goddard asked.
She said the gang might have assumed the urn was valuable because of the gold-plated cap and thought it could be sold to a pawn shop.
Goddard said the gang then forced her mother to give up the keys to her car. They loaded their loot inside the Nissan Almera and drove off.
Kleve managed to push her panic button, but the security company did not respond.
“She tried to free herself, but she couldn’t. Eventually she walked towards an open window and cried out for help,” said Goddard.
Zack Anthony, a neighbour, heard her cries and jumped over the gate and saw the dogs dead on the grass.
A bone with seeds of aldicarb (insecticide), popularly known as Two Step, and widely used by burglars to poison dogs, was discovered on the property.
“It was gruesome,” he said. “I cut her loose with a pair of scissors. “She was so shaken and I still had to tell her the dogs were dead.”
Goddard said the dogs were like children to her mother and her constant companions after her husband died.
“We cannot bring them back, but I urge the robbers to return the ashes and the urn.”
The urn has “Roger Kleve” and his birth and death dates engraved on it.
On Tuesday, Karen Buxton, head of Reaction Waterfall Three, a community protection group, said the group was on high alert following the attack on Kleve.
“We will increase our patrolling. It has shocked the entire community,” she said.
Police had made no arrests yet, spokesman Thulani Zwane said.
The incident comes a week after the death of
Phillip “Casper” Sithole, a dangerous hijacker and murderer who was shot dead by the police during a car chase near KwaMashu. Sithole was known to have been behind numerous attacks in the Highway area.
* Earlier this year, provincial commissioner Mmamonnye Ngobeni deployed a task team of 68 policemen to handle violent crime in the upper Highway area.
Soon after, police confirmed violent crime had eased off in the area but noted a spike in house break-ins in Durban’s northern suburbs.
The Mercury
