A Claremont tennis coach became an accidental hero when he rescued a girl from being mugged at knifepoint – by hitting the attacker with his tennis racquet.
Iain Purchase was busy coaching his pupils at the Claremont Tennis Club, close to Herschel Girls Senior School, late in the afternoon when he heard a girl screaming outside the courts.
“I had no clue who it was or what was happening,” he said. “I just ran out with my racquet in my hand and there was a guy that was mugging this girl just outside the gate.”
The attacker had a knife, and already had the girl’s phone in his hands, but that didn’t deter Purchase.
“I just hit him as hard as I could with my racquet for him to drop (the phone),” he said. “I kept smacking him. He let it go and I chased him down the road.”
A chase through the leafy suburbs ensued, with neighbours and passers-by joining in to help apprehend the mugger.
As the mugger ran down the road, a driver moved to cut him off. The mugger hit the car, bounced back off and collided with Purchase, sending them both tumbling.
“I landed up on the ground, hurt my MCL (a ligament in the knee), and had cuts and bruises on my face,” Purchase said. “Then this guy still tried to run away.”
The tennis coach was a man down, but with the ruckus that had been caused, others joined the chase and caught the mugger.
“Two or three people came out, held this guy and cable tied him to a pole.”
The victim was a Herschel schoolgirl, who was walking back from Cavendish Square in March this year. She had her cellphone in her back pocket, with a jacket tied tightly around her waist to conceal it. Purchase suspects that the mugger had seen her put it there and followed her, waiting for a chance to attack.
Once the mugger had been all tied up by Herschel parents and bystanders in the vicinity, they called the police. According to Purchase, there were no police vans available that night, so a bystander helped take the mugger to Claremont police station.
Purchase said that due to short-staffing, he never gave a witness statement about the incident.
“We all went to the police station. A couple of people gave statements. They were so short-staffed, I waited an hour then gave my name and number and left.”
SAPS had not yet responded to requests for comment at the time of publishing.
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Source: Weekend Argus
