Gunpoint robbery at South African gamer's household

South African gamer, Sterna Lewis (37), was live streaming on Twitch when three robbers entered her home in Centurion. A video emerged showing the events unfold as it was recorded by the gaming system. 

The 37-year-old, her boyfriend Mario Englebrecht, and her two sons were sat through two and a half hours of torture from the robbers that invaded their home on Friday night in their residential estate in Amberfield, Centurion. 

"Miss Bandiit", as she goes on Twitch, shared her experience of the ordeal with a local newspaper.

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Lewis says she started her three-hour stream of 'Call of Duty: Warzone' just after 20:00 on Friday. It was during her last round at 23:00 when the robbers entered her home. They instantly pulled her headphones off and at that moment, she thought it was one of her sons. One of them was meant to bring her a hot beverage.

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Lewis and Engelbrecht shared that because the robbers had guns, they felt there was no other choice but to comply with them and lay flat on the ground. She asked that they bring her sons into the same room to avoid them being shocked and scared by the robbers without notice. The kids were then brought in and told the same, to lay flat on the ground. The family was then tied with shoelaces and electrical cords around the hands and on the feet.

They then went about the house taking what they could and placing the most valuable things closer to the door. 

The couple's friend, who lives in the same estate as them, took note when Engelbrecht randomly stopped talking on TeamSpeak without saying goodbye and he got no response from Lewis when he tried calling her. This was when he drove to their house. When he heard the voices of the robbers in the garage, he called for the estate’s security. The estate’s security guards arrived at the house and the robbers fled the scene, leaving most of the items they had planned to steal.

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SAPS, the Community Policing Forum, Monitor Net, and a private security company arranged by another streamer arrived on the scene. It turned out that one of Miss Bandiit’s viewers in Cape Town had noticed something was amiss and contacted a streamer in Johannesburg to try and get a security team to the family’s location. At the end of the day, the robbers came away with three smartphones, a few smartwatches, two Xbox consoles, three PCs, nine monitors, and laptops the entire household had. 

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Lewis expressed immense gratitude to the gaming community and members of the ZA Gaming Alliance (ZAGA) Facebook group for their support during and after the incident. They shared that they would assist with the improving of security in Lewis' home. 

While the gamer shared that she will take a break from streaming, she promised to make her first agenda to thank all the people who helped her family through the traumatic event. “I think if I talk about it, I will feel better. It will be like a type of closure,” Lewis shared. She advised that people who find themselves in similar situations stay calm and do what the robbers instruct them to. 

This is a video shared which indicates the first few minutes of the robbery which were captured during the Twitch Live stream. 

Main Image Courtesy: Pexels