There’s a gunman in the house
British doctor’s chilling final text message before intruder cut his and fiancee’s throats
A BRITISH doctor and his fiancee had their throats slit in their US penthouse after sending a desperate message warning of a ‘gunman in the house’.
Richard Field, 49, and Dr Lina Bolanos, 38, may have let their killer into their ‘incredibly secure’ £1.5million Boston apartment after he posed as a delivery man, a relative told the Daily Mail.
After he started attacking them the couple, who had been due to marry this year, managed to text a friend with a ‘plea for help’, prosecutors said.
Police were alerted and rushed to the property where they shot suspected intruder Bampumim Teixeira, a former security guard in the apartment block who was released from jail last month after serving time for a bank robbery.
Dressed in black and armed with a knife and replica pistol, he had packed a bag with jewellery before being seriously injured in the shoot-out.
But officers were too late to save the couple whose bound bodies were found with their throats cut, according to local reports. A message of retribution was scrawled on the wall, it was alleged.
Teixeira, 30, was charged with two counts of murder before a robed judge while still in his hospital bed.
Relatives paid tribute to Dr Field. The son of a BBC cameraman, he was born in London and studied at Sheffield University before emigrating to the US where his mother Kate and younger brother Jason had settled.
His uncle Ron Smith, 70, a retired manufacturing manager who lives in Northamptonshire, told the Mail: ‘Richard was one of the most likeable guys you can imagine.
‘He was easy-going, quite an adventurous character and loved to travel but dedicated to his career. His mother is struggling to cope with the shock of it all, it is very difficult to take in.’
He said the family still did not know the full circumstances of the crime or how the killer managed to get into the building.
‘It’s an incredibly secure apartment, one where you have to have a password to get in,’ he said.
‘Somebody I was talking to said that he pretended to be a delivery man and caught the door as they went into the building.’
Police said they were called by the block’s front desk at 8.40pm on Friday. ‘The caller stated that another party had alerted him to a text requesting police notification for a “serious situation” with a gunman in the victims’ apartment,’ Suffolk County District Attorney’s office said.
When officers arrived at Dr Field’s 11th floor flat they found a set of keys outside. They entered the darkened apartment and in a shoot-out Teixeira was hit in the hand, abdomen, and leg.
The suspect, of nearby Chelsea, had last month been released from jail after two robberies at a Boston bank in 2014 and 2016.
The Boston Globe said a police report showed Teixeira had worked in a security job at the apartment block before 2016. Initial police reports suggested the victims knew their alleged attacker, but Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said that appeared to be a mistake. He added: ‘Nor is there any evidence to explain why he would attack them so viciously.’
The North Shore Pain Management centre, where Dr Field had worked since 2010, praised his ‘tireless devotion’. His fiancee was a paediatric anaesthetist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.