By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Stabbed with a pitchfork in his own home, Cranbourne North widower Rick Maaskant is sadly no stranger to outrageous crime.
An unarmed Mr Maaskant was stabbed in the head and kicked in the back by three male intruders, about 11.20pm on Wednesday 15 March.
It’s the latest in a string of crimes that the retired cleaning business owner has been on the receiving end of. He’s had five cars, his wallet and TV remotes stolen from his Endeavour Drive home, he says.
But he’d never confronted intruders in his house before.
The grandfather of three says if they were second-time offenders they should “put them on a plane and drop them in the ocean”.
“We don’t need any more police, we don’t need any more jails,” he said.
“They just keep turning up.”
Mr Maaskant had been in bed for 10 minutes when he was awoken by a “big bang” inside the house.
The intruders – described as Caucasian, in their early twenties and wearing dark hoodies – had smashed the glass on his recently-replaced sliding back door.
He found them in his hallway, asked them what they were doing and started fighting them with just his hands.
One of the males held a pitchfork to his face, another kicked him in the back seemingly to bring him to ground.
“I couldn’t do much because this fork was in my face.”
In the scuffle, an unarmed Mr Maaskant was deeply stabbed just above his right eye and behind his left ear.
Mr Maaskant considers himself lucky to have escaped with just those wounds.
“Blood was everywhere,” he said.
“I think the blood frightened the guys off.”
Mr Maaskant thinks the intruders were at least associates of earlier car thieves, who had broken into his house several times to steal spare car keys and then his Mazda MX-5 and Hyundai.
He said his neighbourhood had no problems until a particular household of people moved in nearby, as he told Star News in September.
“It never ends, it never ends – now I can’t even run my business because I don’t have a car,” he said at the time.
“Every time I leave here when I come back someone has been inside – how do you feel after that?”
Mr Maaskant thinks his wife died from the “shock” of being victim of one of the car thefts.
When the car was stolen and found with “every piece of glass” smashed, she had become sad and died from a heart attack, he said.
After the most recent assault, Mr Maaskant said one of the occupants had been recently jailed over one of the thefts.
“I’m living with all those criminals in my street.
“But I don’t think I should be moving. They should be moving.
“I’m thinking about a German Shepherd.”
Any information to Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or crimestoppersvic.com.au
