‘I Just start to fire lash!’

A 54-year-old grandmother of 18, who had survived two heart attacks, successfully fought-off a bandit early Sunday morning, by jumping onto the intruder and fighting him to the ground. In the fracas, Juliana Sutton managed to grab a hammer and pounded the thief on his head, forcing him to scream out in pain and flee her home.

“I just start to fire lash,” she told Newsday adding that she is preparing for the intruder to “come back”, saying she will be even “more ready” this time. According to Sutton of Well Road, Siparia, about six months ago she purchased a stereo and left it on at nights. She said about 3.30 am Sunday she was awakened when the radio stopped playing. Sutton told Newsday she thought at first that it was her husband who had turned off the stereo. She said she keeps the bedroom door open and from her room she saw someone “pick up” the stereo. It was then she realised there was an intruder in the house. “I don’t know how I fly off my bed and start to struggle with him,” Sutton recalled, adding that it was an instinctive response of anger of being robbed.

Demonstrating with her arms, Sutton said she grabbed the masked man and he dropped the stereo. She said the two of them began to struggle and she was pushed to the ground but she held on to the man and he too fell. As they rolled around on the floor of the flat, two-bedroom house, Sutton explained, she managed to reach the doorway between the living room and her bedroom. The woman said she usually kept a hammer and a hand saw at the foot of her bed, for easy access. From the doorway she reached and grabbed the hammer and the intruder began to get up off the floor.

According to Sutton, she got off the floor and kept swinging the hammer at the bandit but he kept “ducking” causing her to “bang up the door and walls”. At that same time, one of Sutton’s grandchildren, 3-year-old Jameela Davis, came out of her bedroom and called out “Granny!” Sutton said she told the child to “go back inside,” and the child retreated to her room. The other grandchild, Nicholas Benjamin, 10, never came out of the room. “I just start to fire lash,” she told Newsday of her fight with the bandit. the bandit was hit on his head, causing him to grab his head and run through the front door and escaped through bushes at the back of the house.

Recalling the incident yesterday, Sutton said as she fought off the bandit for her prized stereo which she spent $3000 to purchase, she kept thinking: “He ent’ going with my stereo. It’s either he dead or I dead.” According to Sutton, she wasn’t frightened when she observed the bandit. She told Newsday she had twice suffered heart attacks, but couldn’t recall when exactly. She explained that she had two clogged arteries and following Sunday’s incident, she hadn’t been feeling well for the past two days.

The 54-year-old unemployed woman receives Government assistance. She said she had always taken the view that if ever an intruder came into her home, he would leave empty handed. “I always tell my husband they not leaving here with anything,” she stated. Following Sunday morning’s experience, Sutton was adamant that if such an incident should ever occur again she would again jump to defend her home. “If they come again, ah ready for them,” she exclaimed defiantly. Sutton told police she couldn’t identify the intruder because he wore a mask and gloves, but stated that he was slim built. Siparia police are continuing investigations.