By Sarah Schwager
A STRING of luck stopped a burglar from getting away with loot from a Tynong home last week.
Tynong woman Sandra Godfrey, who works at Priceline in Pakenham, returned home at noon on Friday during a work break to see a car on her driveway had become stuck in a drainage channel at the front of the property.
Ms Godfrey said the driver had miscalculated and one wheel of his car was in the culvert.
After calling for a neighbour to bring a tractor to pull the car onto the drive, Ms Godfrey realised the car was full of her household belongings.
“I walked around the car to assess the damage when I recognised my own stuff on the back seat of his car,” she said.
“I kept myself composed and pretended like I didn’t know.
“I made an excuse that my car was getting hot and I wanted to put it in the shade… then ran into the house.
“It was then I saw that the house had been ransacked.”
Ms Godfrey said she locked herself in the house and rang the police.
In the meantime, she said the man came up to the back door and started calling for her.
“I thought, I had to defend myself so I grabbed the only thing I could find, a fencing foil,” she said.
She said she looked outside as the man walked back up the driveway and the tractor arrived. “I ran back to the car and hollered at the tractor ‘don’t let him go’,” she said.
Ms Godfrey said she and two neighbours held the man at bay, she on one side on the driveway still with the foil and the two men on the road, until the police arrived.
A television, DVD and video player, crossbow, four fishing rods, two guitars and a 30millimetre shifter from the Nine Mile Road home were all recovered from the car.
The burglar had entered the house via a side window.
“How many times have people come home and found everything gone,” Ms Godfrey said.
She said she had been alone with the man for most of that time during the incident and it was keeping levelheaded and cool that kept the situation under control.
“I was already suspicious of him, I didn’t want him to be aware of that.”
Ms Godfrey said she had been lucky this time but it was important that people left their houses well secured and that neighbours kept a lookout for each other’s homes.
“We’ve upgraded the security since,” she said.
•A 29yearold Narre Warren man has been charged with burglary and was bailed to appear before the Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 4 April.
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