Estate agent fights gang of masked robbers

‘Instinct just kicked in ... I didn’t want them anywhere near my wife’

An estate agent single-handedly fought off three balaclava-clad burglars, one of whom reportedly threatened to kill him during a raid on his home.

Landing a volley of punches, Asif Ali, 35, forced the three men back into the garden of his home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

One then allegedly returned with a sharp weapon and said: “I’m going to kill you.”

As another threw a brick at his glass door, Mr Ali said he “grabbed a couple of kitchen knives” and chased the men off his property.

He said he had been on a business call when his dogs alerted him to a masked man dressed all in black standing in his living room.

“He threw a punch at me and we started to fight,” Mr Ali told Manchester Evening News. “I didn’t know what I was doing. Instinct just kicked in – I was just trying to get him out of the house.

“A second man came in and I thought he was trying to get upstairs where my wife was. I didn’t want them anywhere near my wife.

“I got them outside, but they were pulling at the door, then one of them pulled out what looked like a knife, but the police think it might have been a screwdriver.

“He said, ‘I’m going to kill you’. He started to walk back towards me. I ran back inside and grabbed a couple of kitchen knives and chased them back out.”

A fourth would-be burglar was waiting outside his front door, but he also fled with the rest of the gang.

Mr Ali released CCTV footage in the hope of identifying the robbers, and has offered a £5,000 reward for information leading to their capture.

Expressing concern about the brazenness of the attack, he said he thought the men must have known there was someone inside the house when they entered.

“My wife doesn’t want to live here – she is very shaken,” he told the BBC. “She is staying with family at the moment but I am not going to be scared off by this. I am very angry.”

Greater Manchester Police have been contacted for comment.