Durban - Thoughts of imminent death were all that ran through 18-year-old Jethro Jackson's mind as a group of armed burglars held him at gunpoint during a robbery at his Westville home on Tuesday.
"I felt the barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my head and I thought I was going to die," he told News24.
He eventually managed to escape his assailants by forcing open the burglar bars in the toilet, where they had locked him up.
Jackson said he had been caught unawares by four men who had forced their way into his home while he was eating breakfast in the lounge.
"I was standing up to go to the kitchen, and all of a sudden there was a gun in my face," he said.
"Four guys were in the house and they told me to lie down. I could feel the gun pressed against the back of my head and I thought I was going to die. They kept asking where our safe was. We don’t have one and they didn’t believe me," he said. The teenager said the men had hauled him to his feet and forced him around the house with the barrel of the gun pressed into his ribs, as he showed them where everything of value was kept.
"They wanted my mom's jewellery and they asked where the money was, and they made me fetch my money from work that I had been saving," he said.
"Everywhere we went, they held my head down. From there, they put me in the bathroom and put my head against the wall. They tied me up with a belt and some cables and they told me to stay there, then locked the bathroom door."
Jackson said that when he heard the door slam and his dogs stop barking, he managed to free himself. He then bent the bathroom burglar bars, squeezed through and ran onto the road, where he stopped the first car he saw.
"I asked them to call the police. That moment they [the robbers] forced me to lie down I really thought they were going to shoot me in the head."
Jackson contacted his mother, who alerted emergency services who then rushed to the scene.
Police were investigating.
Reading posts online about security systems just give better profiles on who to target, if I were a criminal I would be a damn good one.