Strongbox clue in break-in that killed 91-yr.-old
COPS RELEASED photos on Tuesday of a man wanted for questioning in a Brooklyn home invasion that left a 91-year-old man dead.
The man pictured in the photo is wearing a backpack and is carrying a locked box that cops said was stolen last week from a home on Decatur St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The stolen box contained $5,000.
Waldiman Thompson died after being tied up with his 100-year-old wife, Ethlin, by heartless perps who preyed upon the elderly couple Wednesday.
Investigators are asking for the public’s help to identify the “person of interest.” They ask anyone with information to call the NYPD’s CrimeStoppers hotline at (800) 577-8477.
A $10,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone in the deadly home invasion.
Two robbers burst into the couple’s home around 3:30 p.m. and tied them up. After they left, Ethlin Thompson managed to free herself and call for help.
Her husband of 30 years suffered a heart attack and died at Interfaith Medical Center. His death has been ruled a homicide.
Detectives are sure that the man in the video is one of the suspects that were involved because he is carrying the lockbox that was taken from the home, police sources said.
A second man that was also videotaped has been identified, vetted and ruled out as a suspect. The two men were in two separate videos, according to police sources.
Police believe the suspect worked with a few other people, but no one else has been identified.
Police interviewed a relative in the hours after the attack, but have “no reason to suspect that he is involved,” according to the source.
Still, cops are looking into the possibility that it was an inside job.
“There has to be some reason why they chose that particular house,” the source said.
The search was heating up as the NYPD released statistics on crime victims 65 and older across the city. The stats are a mixed bag.
The number of robberies involving victims from that age group fell 37% from 106 in 2015 to 67 in 2016. The number of felony assaults rose from 204 to 233, a 14% spike.
On Sunday, a 77-year-old man was knocked over in his wheelchair on a Bronx street after arguing with a man. The fall broke his pelvis. Two days earlier, an 83-year-old woman was assaulted in a break-in at her Queens home. And on Friday, a 94-year-old man was beaten and robbed outside his Chelsea apartment.
Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer and prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said many crimes against the elderly are not reported because the victims are often embarrassed.
“A typical older person doesn’t want any trouble and won’t approach the police,” O’Donnell said. “There are a lot of vulnerable people and they’re invisible to everybody else.”