Dog helps drive off attack by burglars

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 9

Dog helps drive off attack by burglars

Special correspondent

A four-year-old fox ter-rier-cross cattle dog saved his master and family from serious injury by hammer, garden hoe, and rifle-wielding burglars at Okaihau yesterday. Police used a helicopter and the Whangarei armed offenders squad in a search for the attackers yesterday afternoon. Late last night there was no sign of the five young suspects, at least one of whom was thought to be a woman. An Okaihau farmer, Mr Robert Jordan, said the speed and tenacity of his dog, 80, had saved him and probably his two daughters from serious injury.

Denise Jordan, aged 15, suffered facial cuts and a gashed arm when one of the burglars hit her and the car she was sheltering in with a garden hoe.

Mr Jordan was hit on the head with a hammer before retreating to safety. Shaken, bloodied and still furious at the audacity of the attack, Mr Jordan described how he

had looked across from his greenhouse to see several people loading his belongings on to a trailer just after midday. He set off running across the paddocks to the house as the burglars began driving away but they had so much gear loaded on the trailer, stolen from Kamo in Whangarei the previous night, that they got stuck on Mr Jordan’s steep metal driveway. “There was one joker trying to push the car, and I said to him where the hell did he think he was going? Next thing, the driver jumped out with a hammer and smacked me on the side of the head and the leg, but Bo (the dog) went for him. “I picked up a big rock to defend myself and between the rock and the dog he backed off a bit,” Mr Jordan said.

When another person got out of the car brandishing a rifle and threatening him, Mr Jordan fled about 50 metres back to his house with Bo snapping at the attackers. The dog’s distractions gave Mr Jordan a handy lead and he was able to

lock himself in the house and telephone the police. Bo then became highly agitated and bailed up the rifle-wielding attacker in the earport. Meanwhile, Denise Jordan and her sister. Karlene, aged 13, had arrived in the driveway to be terrified at the sight of the remaining burglars in the car and their father being chased down the drive by the armed men. Denise Jordan stalled her car in the drive but the vehicle was rammed by the burglars’ old Holden and shunted out of the way. At that point, the armed pair who had chased Mr Jordan into the house ran back up the driveway. Denise Jordan said she thought her father was dead.

The man with the rifle ran past the girls' car but the other- man, now armed with a garden hoe, smashed the windscreen of their car as she and her sister screamed for help.

He then smashed the driver’s window, gashing Denise Jordan’s arm, with the hoe, before also

knocking out the back windscreen and demanding money.

When told the girls did not have any cash, the man ran to join his accomplices and the Holden car drove away northwards on State highway 1.

The Jordans’ house was ransacked.

The burglars left behind diving gear and two firearms on the trailer they abandoned in the driveway.

But a shotgun, a highpowered semi-automatic rifle, ammunition for both, arid a considerable quantity of jewellery were stolen.

A motor-cycle believed stolen in a previous burglary was also left behind on the trailer.

Armed offenders squads were deployed at a number of checkpoints in the far north yesterday afternoon, stopping cars similar to the old model darkgreen Holden used by the attackers. A similar vehicle seen in the Taheke district by the police observer in the helicopter, was stopped but found not to be the vehicle involved.