Af­ter pray­ing and beg­ging ban­dits who broke in­to their home not to rape and mur­der them, a 77-year-old busi­ness­woman and her 40-year-old daugh­ter are plan­ning to move abroad.

“I have to fly out of here. I can­not stay here,” Shirley Bali­ram­s­ingh said when asked how she plans to re­cov­er from the trau­ma­tis­ing in­va­sion at her home in Philip­pine, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day.

With her oth­er daugh­ter Shelly cry­ing over the phone in the Unit­ed States, plans were al­ready afoot to pur­chase plane tick­ets and se­cure ac­com­mo­da­tion in Flori­da.

Bali­ram­s­ingh said she locked the house and went to bed at 10.30 pm. She sleeps with Di­anne, who has a con­gen­i­tal spinal de­fect and has to use a walk­er. At 2 am, how­ev­er, three masked men in dark cloth­ing, in­clud­ing one with a Venezue­lan ac­cent, shook her out of her sleep.

Di­anne be­gan beat­ing the ban­dits with a pil­low, but Bali­ram­s­ingh stopped her as they threat­ened to kill them.

The ban­dits, armed with guns and a long blade, used a tele­phone cord and com­put­er mouse to tie Bali­ram­s­ingh and Di­anne’s feet to­geth­er and their arms be­hind their backs. They used cloth­ing to gag the women be­fore scour­ing the house, re­mov­ing sheets, tow­els and cloth­ing from draw­ers, clos­ets and even the dry­er as they searched for valu­ables.

“These men came up in front of me and said, Shhh! Be qui­et. They asked me where the mon­ey was. I did not know what to say, so I told them the mon­ey was in the draw­er clos­et. Then they asked me where the jew­el­ry was, and they went in­to the mas­ter bed­room and took all my di­a­monds and neck­laces,” Bali­ram­s­ingh said.

The men stole over $100,000 in jew­el­ry, $17,000 in cash, US$2,000, a tele­vi­sion, DVR and mon­i­tor, al­co­hol, and mo­bile phones. They then loaded the items in­to Bali­ram­s­ingh’s $400,000 Nis­san Qashqai SUV and drove away.

Bali­ram­s­ingh took about an hour to loosen her re­straints and called out to a neigh­bour, who con­tact­ed San Fer­nan­do po­lice.

“I was on­ly pray­ing to God: Do not rape me or kill me. They said they were go­ing to kill me. The man had a gun on my head, so you know, and it was a big piece of iron he had in his hand. It was a gun and a long knife. They said they were go­ing to kill us. I said, ‘Please, do not kill us’.”

Bali­ram­s­ingh has seen many sto­ries of vi­o­lent home in­va­sions. With her home equipped with se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, in­clud­ing a sur­veil­lance cam­era sys­tem, bur­glar proof­ing and a re­mote con­trol gate, she did not fear falling prey to bur­glars. How­ev­er, the ban­dits jumped over the back wall of her home and at­tempt­ed to pry open the bur­glar-proof from her laun­dry room. When that failed, they picked a lock at the back and en­tered. She be­lieves they spent over two hours in her house, even us­ing her toi­let. The ban­dits al­so re­moved minia­ture mur­tis from their rest­ing place, per­fume and some clothes but left them be­hind.

She re­called one ban­dit ask­ing for the “Chi­nee man”, re­mem­ber­ing that she pre­vi­ous­ly rent­ed an apart­ment on the com­pound to a Chi­nese na­tion­al for three-and-a-half years. How­ev­er, he re­turned to Chi­na. She be­lieves the bur­glars knew de­tails about her and her home. She said a lot of men worked around her house last year.

Bali­ram­s­ingh feels crime is get­ting worse and with the trau­ma she suf­fered, her chil­dren be­lieve it is time to leave.

“I plan to leave this coun­try. I called my daugh­ter in the States, and she cried and told me, ‘Mom­my, I am send­ing a tick­et for you to come right away’.”

Bali­ram­s­ingh told Sher­ry that she could not leave the house un­at­tend­ed.

“They say ‘for­get all the build­ing, think about your life and come up here’. A lit­tle bit again, the man (would have) killed me.”