Lightning might not strike the same place twice‚ but pepper spray certainly can - as a gang of KwaZulu-Natal thieves can probably attest to.
A choking mist of pepper spray sent burglars packing during their night-time break-in at a Hillcrest company on Wednesday.
While it cannot be 100% confirmed that it was the same men‚ the incursion at the H20 store came after another break-in that had similar results last week.
Each time that robbers crawled into the store‚ a pepper spray alarm has flooded the room with noxious gas‚ sending them running.
During last week's attempted robbery‚ the men spent several minutes breaking in‚ but were sent scurrying away‚ empty-handed‚ just seconds later.
On Wednesday‚ all that the coughing bandits were able to grab on their way out was a heat-gun.
Ian Colls‚ the owner of Compusafe‚ which installed the alarm‚ said that the robbers likely had short-term memory issues and suspected the same gang to be responsible for both instances.
“This is the fourth break-in since the pepper alarm was installed. This time they cut a hole in the bottom corner of the window and crawled inside. I connected a special sensor which caught them and all they got away with was a heat-gun‚” he said.
The incursion at the shop that sells water purifiers was the fourth attempted burglary at the store in under a year.
- TMG Digital/The Times
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