BURGLARY TRAGEDY

DEATH OF RETIRED TEACHER (64) NOT SUSPICIOUS, SAY PSNI

POLICE are no longer treating the death of a 64-year-old woman whose body was found shortly after her car was stolen in north Belfast as suspicious.

May Stevens and her husband were in their Lismoyne Park home when it was entered between 1.30am and 2am on Sunday.

A number of items were taken along with her red Hyundai i30 car, registration NRZ 3370. At around 3am, officers enquiring about her car — which had been seen a short time earlier on the North Circular Road having failed to stop for police — called at her home.

The PSNI officers found Mrs Stevens dead.

It’s believed her husband had been upstairs asleep at the time.

The car was later abandoned by two men in Glenbank Place, Ballysillan, at 6.45am. Detec- tive Chief Inspector Peter Montgomery from the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch called the death a “sickening incident” and appealed directly to the two men to examine their consciences and hand themselves in.

However, on Tuesday night Mr Montgomery said they were no longer treating Mrs Stevens’ death as suspicious following a post-mortem.

Police have been investigating a possible link to two other at- tempted burglaries in the area in the early hours of Sunday — one of which was also in Lismoyne Park.

After 10 years as a maths teacher at Belfast Boys’ Model School, Mrs Stevens spent most of her career in further education at Belfast Metropolitan College before recently retiring from the Northern Regional College.

She was about to become a grandmother for the first time before her death.