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Remember, your life is worth more than material possessions

A group of robbers who held up a couple, their children and a farm worker near Kimberley thanked the family for their co-operation before fleeing, Die Volksblad newspaper reported on Wednesday.

They told the family they should understand the robbery was their way of earning money, the same way the couple earned money from farming.

Gerhard Karsten, 38, his wife, three children, aged between 11 and one, and a farm worker, were locked up in one of the rooms in the farmhouse.

Everybody was tied except the two toddlers, aged one and two.

The newspaper reported that one of the robbers carried the one-year-old baby on his hip when the girl started crying and calmed her.

The robbers confronted the Karstens with two hand guns outside the house at 8.30pm on Sunday.

They told the family it was a robbery and they would not hurt the family if they co-operated.

According to the report, one of the robbers was aggressive and kicked Karsten, while another was friendly.

His wife was nevertheless threatened while forced to hand over jewellery.

The robbers fled with the cash, jewellery, cellphones and one of the family’s vehicles.

“My advice to people in such a situation is not to be difficult and not to play the hero,” Karsten was quoted as saying.

He said if the robbers felt alarmed, they would have shot them.

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Tue May 21 16:19:03 SAST 2013 ::

Aug 22, 2012

TKay

Lol! negotiating with robbers? jaa nee - this is Msanzi
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Aug 22, 2012

MommaC

This is just funny :)
Only in SA can we be grateful for 'polite' robbers
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Aug 22, 2012

GODESS

South Africa, alive with possibilities. No need for blood shedding, glad they are safe (not happy with the fact that they got robbed). worse could have happened.
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Aug 22, 2012

Papage

Police should be able to track them down with the cell phones they took, hope they did that already.
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Aug 22, 2012

Kgaoza606

Interesting, let's also hail them as heroes for takin somebody's hard-earned money in just a matter of minutes, with guns pointed at them, or rather when their next victims include an attractive young girl who eventually gets raped, even better, when their next victim is shot dead for not being as cooperative and only trying to protect his hard-earrned interests. Fu#ck these guys, they are not better than rapists and murderers who are all over terrorising our communities...
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Aug 22, 2012

Lehido

So, our SA robbers go to work everyday.......?...Interesting
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Aug 22, 2012

skwamasamabele

Hushing the baby in the midst of robbery?? It goes to show some people dont like to see babies in distress. Its not nice being robbed, but I do commend those robbers for not hurting anyone, jewellery is replacable, life is not. Kgaoza606, would you have had it another way? if you were the victim? Get over your moralistic rubbish
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