By Anita Dangazele
When an elderly woman bit off her rapist’s finger, she had no idea that it would be this detail that would see to the suspect’s arrest.
The community of Freshwaters village in Eastern Cape’s Stutterheim rallied together to locate a man suspected of breaking into an 82-year-old woman’s home and raping her on Saturday.
The elderly victim, who lives alone, said she was sleeping when two men entered her home in the early hours of Saturday morning and demanded money, after which the men raped her.
“Couldn’t he see that I am an old lady? I asked him and he said the part that he wanted from me wasn’t old. How could a young man do that to a woman as old as me?” she asked.
Hearing of the terrible ordeal that had befallen the elderly woman, ward committee member Xolani Mbingelo gathered the community and asked them to help trace the suspects.
“I visited the victim and she told me what happened. I called the police, who took her to hospital. I then decided to call a community meeting and asked them to help me trace the suspects.
“Granny had told me that she bit one of the suspect’s fingers, so we began looking for someone with an injured hand,” Mbingelo said.
“Some community members spotted two young men walking together, one of whom had a bandaged hand, and he alerted me. We then called a community meeting where everyone was invited, including the two suspects, but they did not attend the meeting. So we went looking for them and called the police.”
Ward councillor Mooi Nqini said it was clear that the suspects had targeted the elderly woman because they knew she lived alone.
“Families should not let the elderly live alone, because they become easy targets for crime and incidents like this one. It’s clear that these suspects targeted her knowing she would be alone in the house.”
Nqini added he was proud of his community for not taking the law into their own hands and for coming out in their numbers to assist one another.
“Very often you find that communities beat up suspects and end up killing them, but this community came together to assist as soon as they heard one of them had been attacked,” Nqini said.
Eastern Cape provincial spokesperson Colonel Priscilla Naidu had not yet confirmed the arrest at the time of going to print.
