Af­ter an el­der­ly woman sent two armed ban­dits scam­per­ing by rais­ing an alarm, St Joseph res­i­dents are be­ing urged to get air horns for their pro­tec­tion.

The call comes from Crime Stop­pers di­rec­tor Dar­rin Carmichael as he urged res­i­dents to learn from the in­ci­dent. He made the sug­ges­tion while speak­ing at a po­lice town hall meet­ing at the Mara­cas, St Joseph Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day night.

A short video show­ing two ban­dits walk­ing up to the woman’s front door of her Val­ley View, St Joseph home was cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia on Wednes­day.

The ban­dits were then seen run­ning from the prop­er­ty as the woman blew the air horn.

An­oth­er an­gle of the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era footage at the prop­er­ty showed the ban­dits es­cap­ing in a white car as the air horn con­tin­ued to blare.

Carmichael who has en­cour­aged res­i­dents to get air horns at pre­vi­ous town hall meet­ings, said the in­ci­dent was tes­ta­ment to the ef­fec­tive­ness of the de­vice in rais­ing an alarm.

He al­so ad­vised res­i­dents to keep the air horns and cell­phones handy at all times.

“We al­ways ad­vo­cate that wher­ev­er you have your cell­phone, you have your air horn right there.

“Be­cause if you’re go­ing to wash your ve­hi­cle, you can’t be out­side and your air horn is in­side.

“If you’re go­ing to charge your phone at night, have your air horn right there.

“You can’t tell the ban­dit who run­ning in your house, ‘Hold on my air horn is up­stairs let me go and get it,’

“Get the air horns, do the drills and put it in­to prac­tice, be­cause when dan­ger hap­pens you won’t know what to do.”

Carmichael added that while airhorns were use­ful de­vices for per­son­al pro­tec­tion, net­work­ing at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el through What­sApp groups were equal­ly im­por­tant to re­lay in­for­ma­tion quick­ly to au­thor­i­ties.

Re­fer­ring to the quick re­sponse time of po­lice to the at­tempt­ed home in­va­sion, he said po­lice were able to find the ve­hi­cle with the as­sis­tance of res­i­dents.

“I was so proud of the Val­ley View What­sApp group be­cause in the chat, the in­for­ma­tion was shared.

“Peo­ple shared the video footage, we got an idea of what the ve­hi­cle was, we got the li­cense plate, some­body called the po­lice.

“The car was even found and I guar­an­tee with Mr Smith at the helm, those guys get­ting caught by the week­end.

“That is the neigh­bour­hood watch in ef­fect.”

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, head of the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Richard Smith said while What­sApp groups were an ef­fec­tive means of quick­ly shar­ing in­for­ma­tion on crimes, he warned against clut­ter­ing the groups with un­nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion.

He al­so urged res­i­dents to be se­lec­tive in who they add to the groups, as some peo­ple may feed in­for­ma­tion to crim­i­nals.