[WATCH] Couple targeted by thieves multiple times live in fear of another burglary

Couple targeted by thieves multiple times live in fear of another burglary

The dangers old people face when living alone are well known, but the gravity of some of the more harrowing experiences they face is not always understood by everyone.

For people like Gerit and Leli Mifsud, living in a quaint secluded farmhouse in the north of the island should representative the bucolic peacefulness of the Maltese countryside. Their welcoming smiles, the sound of dogs barking as visitors walk up to their farmhouse, belie the extraordinary ordeals that have afflicted the couple: victims to a string of robberies that stretch back as far as 2004.

This is indeed the reality of people like the Mifsud couple, whose possessions were stolen in a series of burglaries that has left them helpless, and desperate, at their cruel fate.

Leli, once a mechanic who also worked in Libya, says his family has been afflicted by repetitive robberies even since when they first lived in Naxxar, prior to moving into a more secluded farmhouse. “I had seen a man strolling back and forth from my bedroom window, while receiving anonymous calls on my mobile phone. When I returned to my garage the next morning, to continue working on a car I was repairing for a customer, I found the garage cleared of all the equipment I was using, on my part-time job. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I found the garage door opened and every tool I had, stolen,” he said.

Leli estimates that he lost some Lm5,0000 (€11,646) in mechanical equipment that was stolen. “The oil leak from the truck they used to load the tools was still streaking the garage’s ramp,” he said, leading him to assume that the thieves had just left his premises when he discovered the burglary.

But Gerit suffered an even heavier loss, when the house was burglarised of some €4,000 in cash and the jewellery she had inherited from her dear mother. She had just arrived home from a day of fishing, a hobby she enjoys in her free time, when she found the kitchen lights turned on. To her dismay, the kitchen window was cracked open and items that used to sit on her windowsill were scattered across the floor. The guest bedroom connected to the kitchen had been raided by the intruders. “I remember going to the bedroom and all I could see were opened jewellery boxes scattered across the room,” she said.

The thieves had taken every single piece of precious item in their house, including the gold she had inherited from her mother. Grasping at her ring finger and crying, Gerit said that even her wedding ring had been stolen. Another €3,800 in cash that was stashed in the house, to pay for a knee operation for the old woman, was also taken. “I cried so much when I saw they had taken everything,” she said.

Gerit’s heartbreak did not stop there. Entering the couple’s household, one immediately recognises her love for animals, as dogs and cats greet visitors. The visibly distraught woman recalled the day her husband discovered the couple’s dogs had been killed in cold blood.

“I remember my husband, one day, simply shouting ‘blood! blood!’, while I was out in the neighbouring fields we use to grow vegetables,” Gerit says, fearing that her husband had injured himself, only to find her three dogs slaughtered.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes. I saw my three dogs lying there in pools of blood, gashed and stabbed in the most inhumane manner possible,” she said, tears running down her cheeks.

Gerit had been raising the dogs since they were puppies, as people used to leave the unwanted pups on her doorstep. “I can come to understand why people would want to steal gold and money… but to kill innocent dogs? I remember one of the dogs was stabbed so violently that her hipbone was sticking out of her dismembered body,” she said.

The couple’s saga has not ended. For as recently as a fortnight ago, early in the morning, the couple heard knocking on their front door.

The elderly woman recalled how a man, whom she described as having a thick foreign accent, asked her to open the front door, asking for someone named ‘Robert’. The couple refused the man entry, but he kept on insisting.  “I was scared and the first thing that popped into mind was telling him that if he didn’t go away I would call my son who was a police sergeant,” she said. The man eventually left, never to be seen again.

“I don’t feel afraid, I feel angry,” Leli says, at the problematic prospect of being targeted by thieves roaming around secluded parts looking for houses like theirs to be ransacked.

“Wouldn’t you feel angry if your property was stolen, if your wife had her gold stolen or if her dogs were killed?” he exclaimed.

Gerit’s feelings are mutual. “I’m not afraid any more. They can’t take anything more from me. I’m only afraid they will hurt me,” she said.

Leli and Gerit are still seeking justice on who executed the robberies, having only heard about the man who killed their dogs.

“We only heard about the guy who killed our dogs from a family friend, not even from the police… the rest are still at large,” Gerit said.