When the men, dressed in head-to-toe black with faces masked, broke into a home in Ocean Reef at 5.45am today, they came face-to-face with a woman inside the property.
The 31-year-old fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) worker told 9News she was asleep alone in her Tarolinta Gardens home when her dog started barking.
When she opened her bedroom door she saw the four men, who had scarves covering their faces, standing in her kitchen.
She said one of the intruders forced her into the bedroom before striking her to the face up to three times with the handle of a 50-centimetre knife.
The intruder also groped her and screamed for her phone. After assaulting her, they stole the keys to a blue BMW and took off.
“It was really, really loud they obviously really took off and he floored it,” neighbour Francis Powell said.
The woman is now too scared to return home.
“We’re still conducting a number of lines of inquiry – if anyone has any vision or any information to assist police, please come forward,” Detective Constable Ciara Lydiate said in a press conference today.
Just 15 minutes before that incident, CCTV footage captured three intruders in black clothing armed with machetes approaching the front of another Ocean Reef home at 5.30am.
They used a hand to cover the doorbell camera as they approached the front door, before suddenly leaving the property.
It was a close call for the family, who had young children asleep inside.
The homeowner says the gang tried to break into his Mercedes in the driveway.
The group’s crime spree across Perth’s northern suburbs started an hour earlier, in Butler.
Police say about 4.30am, two men broke into a home on Soham Way and stole a white Toyota Carolla.
Less than a kilometre away, police say a car then rammed the garage of a Millom Street home, where two men entered and shouted at a woman before taking off.
Local MP Lorna Clarke says more CCTV is needed to improve safety.
“No one should feel unsafe in their home,” Clarke said.
“As a mum, I understand that fear and it’s not OK.”
Tonight police are yet to track down both cars and the wanted men are still on the run.
