A gang of armed robbers hitting a Chadcombe house in Harare on Monday night found out the hard way that they were attacking the family of retired CID Homicide detective Mr Joseph Nemaisa who managed to race back home, leap over a wall and in the resulting gun fire exchange , took out three of the five robbers and saved his family from torture and further assault.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Nemaisa who is now a practicing lawyer said he left home around 6pm going to Chisipite to do business, before receiving a call a few hours later from his son, Courage, that armed robbers were breaking into the house. “I received a call around 9.30pm from my family informing me that armed robbers had raided my house. I then rushed to my house and gained entry by jumping over the security wall at the back of my yard.
“I then decided to fire some shots into the air in a bid to confuse the robbers,” he said. Mr Nemaisa then discovered that all his family members had been bundled inside the main bedroom while the robbers were looking for cash and valuables.
He saw one of the robbers armed with an AK47 through the window and shot him once on the chest. The robber managed to crawl, shouting for help. Two other robbers were shot at the same point where the first one was shot, all of them through the window.
The other two robbers fired several shots while inside the house, before they jumped through a window and fled the scene. Mr Nemaisa, who served 18 years with the CID, said his family was safe and had sustained no serious injuries except that they were still traumatised over the incident.
“This incident has nothing to do with my past but what I can say from my experience is that these robbers have been terrorising Hatfield residents. I am convinced that these are the same culprits. If they actually knew it was me living here, I don’t think they would have come raid this place,” he said.
According to information from police, Mr Nemaisa’s wife saw three men walking near their house before she closed the gate and parked her car and then joined her family in the living room. After about five minutes, she heard their dogs barking viciously and instructed her brother, Masimba Musarurwa, to lock the main door, but as he was doing so she heard someone trying to force that door open.
Her son, Courage Nemaisa then quickly phoned his father informing him of the intruders. Police say the whole family went to their bedrooms while Mrs Nemaisa went into the bathroom where she locked herself in from inside.
The robbers were then led to the bedroom where she handed over US$850. They then ransacked the house and took a Samsung M20 cellphone belonging to Mrs Nemaisa, a black Acer laptop and a shotgun. “When the accused persons were about to leave, Joseph Nemaisa arrived at the scene and shot at the accused who were still in the house and there was an exchange of gunfire which led to the death of three of the accused persons and damaging the walls and windows of the house.”
