History repeats in former Wallaby Toutai Kefu’s horror home invasion
Wallabies legend Toutai Kefu’s horror home invasion was no isolated event, with a strikingly similar event three weeks earlier.
It was the cars in the driveway of retired rugby great Toutai Kefu’s family home in southside Brisbane that attracted them, like ravenous fish to bait.
The horrific scene that unfolded there early Monday, as Kefu fought off the machete and axe-wielding youths who had broken in downstairs – his wife Rachel and their adult children, Josh and Madi, joining the bloody melee – has shocked police and chilled the community. All four were injured.
But it was no isolated event. Barely three minutes’ drive from the Kefus’ well-appointed home on Buena Vista Ave, Coorparoo, another family is recovering from a strikingly similar ordeal at the hands of violent teen offenders who have run riot in the area.
Like the Kefu home invasion, the attack happened in the dead of night three Mondays ago, August 2. Lisa, 60, her adult sons James and Nick, and James’s girlfriend were in bed when the thieves struck, hunting for keys to the four SUVs and cars parked in front of the house. They have asked that their surnames not be published.
James, 25, ventured upstairs, followed by his brother, a 23-year-old carpenter. There, they were confronted by at least three youths in dark hoodies, one of them holding an axe, the others armed with a hammer and knives.
The intruders bristled. The axeman, aged in his late teens, issued a menacing challenge to James: “C’mon bro.”
James said: “I think they were looking for a fight.” But they backed off, piling down the staircase with the brothers in pursuit. Nick peeled off to grab a golf club from his room while James, a strapping electrician, followed the youths outside.
They went one way around the house while he took the other side, converging at the front gate where the youth with the axe turned and swung viciously, narrowly missing him. James jumped the fence to escape.
“I thought at first the weapons were for intimidation,” he told The Weekend Australian, his mother by his side. “But they keep on going at us.”
The raid was one of eight in this prosperous pocket of inner Brisbane that happened overnight on August 1-2, according to a local crime watch group’s Facebook page. Keys and a hammer were stolen from a second home four doors along Newman Ave while the householders slept.
A neighbour, 57-year-old lawyer Geoff Wilson, said this week’s near-tragedy at the Kefu property had people wondering what was going on. “I suppose it happens everywhere, but it’s not something we are accustomed to around here,” he said.
Police believe the four teens who allegedly pulled up outside the Kefus’ home about 3am on Monday in an allegedly stolen Hyundai SUV were also after keys to the four-wheel-drives in the driveway. Three of the alleged juvenile offenders are 15, the other boy just 13; all have been charged with attempted murder, assault causing grievous bodily harm, unlawful use of a motor vehicle, breaking and entering, burglary and deprivation of liberty.
Speaking publicly about the attack for the first time, an emotional Kefu, 47, said on Friday “it could have been a different story” had 21-year-old Josh and their neighbour, believed to be Ben Cannon, a cousin of the former Wallaby’s teammate in the green and gold, Brendan Cannon, not intervened.
Rachel had been woken in their upstairs bedroom and confronted two of the intruders, who attacked Kefu when he emerged. Josh went into “beast mode” to pull them off his father, suffering cuts to his back. The rugby great was stabbed in the abdomen, while daughter Madi, 18, incurred gashes to a hand and arm.
Doctors had feared Rachel might not regain full use of her shattered arm. “At one stage I think the doctor said to her if the blade was sharper it would have cut her whole arm off – but the bone actually stopped the blade,” Kefu said. “So it was really graphic and she’s a trooper, Rach.”
Paying tribute to his neighbour, who tackled one of the youths and pinned him down until police arrived, he said: “Absolutely courageous what he did … there was one stage where I think one of the intruders got out and there was a car waiting for them. They left and they came back and he was the only one that was out the front with the girls.”
James said the youths he encountered were older, but acted just as aggressively as those alleged to have confronted the Kefu family.
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