Dad stabbed in struggle with women burglars

A young father was stabbed with a steak knife and bitten after he confronted two burglars - both young women - in an incident police say could easily have ended in tragedy.

The man was asleep with his pregnant wife in their Hamilton home overnight on Tuesday when he was woken by noises in the living room.

Thinking it was a cat, he got up - to find a woman stealing his laptop.

"I kind of went blank and thought, 'Is that real?"' he said yesterday. "That's when the adrenalin kicked in and I thought, 'You're not going to get away'."

The 28-year-old roofing contractor chased the woman to his front yard, where she fell.

After a brief scuffle, he grabbed her handbag.

He gave the bag to his wife, who had rushed to check on the couple's 2-year-old daughter, and told her to call the police.

He then chased the burglar to the back of his house as she tried to get away, yelling to his neighbours for help.

"She was strong - I thought she was a guy - and we were rolling around on the grass. I was just trying to hold her arms and she kept biting my arm.

"Then I saw this girl come behind me and I felt this scratch on my back and sort of pulled away ... That's when I felt the blood dripping down my back."

The man didn't realise the woman's accomplice had stabbed him in the back with a steak knife.

Across the road, a neighbour was watching DVDs with mates. He heard the commotion but "just thought it was a domestic", so ignored it.

"Then we heard the guy saying, 'You stole my stuff', so we went out to have a look."

He and his friends stopped a 22-year-old woman who was trying to jump a fence on the property as she fled.

"My mates are bigger than me so she wasn't really going to put up a fight," he said.

Police arrived and found the laptop in a garden and another young woman, aged 15, a short distance away.

Hamilton police city area commander Inspector Rob Lindsay commended the man's neighbours, but urged homeowners to use caution rather than confrontation.

"These situations are always difficult," he said.

"Here we have neighbours looking out for each other resulting in the arrest of the woman, which is to be commended, but we also have a homeowner suffering a stab wound trying to defend his property in what could have been very tragic circumstances.

"We would prefer people capture details and descriptions rather than place themselves at risk. If at all possible, call 111 and let us respond to the problem."

The man was treated in Waikato Hospital for severe bite wounds and a knife wound. The weapon just missed puncturing his chest cavity.

"The surgeons just said I was very lucky," he said yesterday. "Looking back, I don't know if I'd do it again but I was just fuming and so pissed off at the time.

"I just didn't know one of them would have a knife."

His wife said the couple had been renting the house for 18 months, but were traumatised and would be moving away from the area.

A 15-year-old girl appeared in the Hamilton Youth Court yesterday afternoon on charges of burglary, aggravated wounding and possession of an offensive weapon.

A 22-year-old woman faces burglary and aggravated wounding charges.