KUCHING: A grandmother suffered multiple slashes to her face and right arm after a robber entered her son’s rented house at Lorong Keranji in Tabuan Desa and attacked her yesterday.

The 56-year-old, surnamed Ting, was in the living room watching over her two-month-old twin grandchildren when a lone man entered via the unlocked back door and confronted her with a meat cleaver he had grabbed from the kitchen.

Family members said that Ting, who arrived here from Limbang earlier this month to help care for her newborn grandchildren, suffered a slash to her right forearm after she was forced to deflect the first blow from the robber.

She then collapsed on the floor and feigned unconsciousness in the hope the robber would leave her alone and take whatever he wanted to.

Instead, the intruder stood above Ting and slashed her face several times with the cleaver- causing her to really lose consciousness- before ransacking the living room of two laptops and two mobile phones.

He only left the house after the twin infants began to cry, and was believed to have escaped out the back where an accomplice was waiting for him on a motorcycle.

The babies’ cries woke up Ting’s 20-year-old daughter who, like her 18-year-old brother, slept through the robbery and were oblivious of what had just happened.

Upon exiting her bedroom, the daughter spotted the bloodied Ting on the floor and immediately woke her brother up before seeking help from neighbours to call the police.

Ting’s eldest son and daughter-in-law, who are the twins’ parents, rushed home upon learning of the incident and were relieved to learn that not only had she survived, but that their children were not harmed.

The grandmother, who had momentarily regained consciousness after the attack to query if her grandchildren were alright and had been fed, was subsequently warded at the Sarawak General Hospital and is reported to be in stable condition.

Several neighbours, meanwhile, urged the police to conduct more routine patrols in the area due to the daily presence of suspicious-looking characters on motorcycles riding through during the day.

“There are many small roads leading in and out of this area, so we don’t really know where some of these people come from. We usually see them slowly riding past our houses in the daytime as though they are surveying which ones to strike,” said one neighbour, who claimed a number of house breaking cases have occurred there this year.

District police chief ACP Roslan Bek Ahmad, who confirmed the case when contacted yesterday, said a forensics team was sent to the house to gather evidence as soon as a report of the incident was received.

He added that the suspects are believed to be locals, and that police are making every effort to identify and track them down.