Husband’s heroic effort saves wife

Two bandits tried to spoil Christmas for a 77-year-old couple but one left with an unexpected “bounty” – a chop with a cutlass!

James and Joyce McBarnett of Harmony Hall were having breakfast last Sunday, December 17 around 6 am, when two men came up their kitchen steps, attacked them and demanded money.{{more}}

“The one who had me was squeezing my neck saying money, money, money,” said a shaken Joyce who had returned from England the Thursday before.

James said that the man who attacked him made it clear that it was “money or your life.”

The former engineer, who retired 13 years ago to resettle in the land of his birth after close to 40 years in England, said that he wasn’t scared for himself but for his wife of over 50 years.

“The guy had her on the ground and he was choking her, he was on top of her, I did not know what he was going to do,” James said.

He said that God’s Spirit moved on him and gave him the courage to act. He told his attacker that he had money in his bedroom and wanted to go get it for him. Lured into a sense of comfort the criminal followed James in only to be greeted, not by dollar bills but a well sharpened cutlass.

“When I raise it up, he take off but the other one was still on my wife so I give him one good chop,” James said, as the slimly built man demonstrated how he brought down the blow. The bandit staggered out of the house helped by his accomplice.

While his wife and others hailed him as a hero James said that he did not do anything that any real man shouldn’t do.

“If a man come into your house and threaten your home and your wife, what else could you do,” he asked rhetorically.

As for the feisty Joyce, she was still fuming; she said that she was willing to fight to the end for her honour and her life.

“Why they come in our house, why he was choking me, what he doing lying down on me,” she asked with rage steaming from her face, still sporting the bruises from the hands that held her down on her kitchen floor.

Since the incident James and Joyce said that they have had difficulty sleeping and were very shaken and disappointed in the actions of young men from their homeland.

The former Dickson, Georgetown residents, had high praise for the way the police and health officials treated them.

“The police told me that they were proud of me,” said James.

They have been receiving endless calls from their children and friends who wanted to make sure they were okay.

But as this Christmas comes and goes James and Joyce said that they will be especially thankful to God for sparing their lives. But Joyce will especially be thankful that she had a husband who was willing to defend her.

Up to press time police had not yet apprehended the culprits. Calliaqua police said they were continuing investigations and were confident that they would get their men.