Mary-Grace Farrugia was rudely woken up at 1 a.m. on Tuesday as a hooded man held his hand tightly over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
The 77-year old, who lives on her own in a Rabat farmhouse surrounded by fields, said she feared for her life when four men, all dressed in black and wearing hoods, broke into her house to rob her of a meagre €200 and a golden necklace.
The men crept up to her bedroom and threatened to kill her if she did not give them the cash.
“They took a bread knife from the kitchen and threatened me with it,” Ms Farrugia said, adding they even put a vacuum cleaner to her face and threatened to suffocate her with it.
She was brave enough to brush the threats aside but the robbers wanted “more and more” from the old woman, who had little more than her meagre pension at home.
“I didn’t have much. I am a pensioner. They stole the little money I had not spent,” she said yesterday.
The ordeal was a lengthy one, the lady recounted, as they searched her house for more cash. She estimated the robbery to have lasted a little less than an hour.
“I gave them my necklace because they kept asking for gold and that was all I had. I told them: Here, that costs €100. But I asked them to give me the small medallion of Our Lady that was with it,” Ms Farrugia said, pointing out that, although the necklace had sentimental value to her, she was left with no choice but to give it to her assailants.
“I told the robbers if they wanted a large sum they should have gone to someone rich and not stolen from the poor,” she said.
“At the time your mind starts to wonder about the worst that can happen. I thought they were going to kill me,” she said, pointing out she was still trembling in shock a good 11 hours after the attack.
She was thankful she did not see any of their faces because she said she was sure they would have killed her if she did. Apart from the shock, she was not injured.
“What happened to me can happen to anyone,” Ms Farrugia said, pointing out it was not a one-off case that men entered elderly-people’s houses and threatened to suffocate them.