Widow, 100, praises God after murder busts
ETHLIN Thompson has added the love of grandmothers to her sustaining faith as she learns to live as a widow.
A group of women who have lost children and grandchildren to street violence helped console the 100-year-old Thompson with prayer and song Tuesday — a day after cops busted the suspected mastermind accused of organizing a cruel home invasion that took Waldiman Thompson’s life.
Surrounded by police and members of the group Grandmother’s LOV — Love Over Violence — Thompson raised her voice to the heavens outside her Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, home as the group joined in the gospel song “When We All Get to Heaven.”
Her strong but raspy voice could be heard above the rest as she raised her hand skyward and sang, “When we all see Jesus, we will sing and shout the victory!”
“Glory! Glory!” Thompson shouted, following the song.
NYPD Chief Joanne Jaffe, head of the department’s Community Affairs Bureau, brought Grandmother’s LOV to Decatur St. to support Thompson. The feisty, deeply religious centenarian has already forgiven the two men who forced their way into her home on Oct. 11 and tied up the couple, triggering the heart attack that killed Thompson’s 91-year-old husband.
“Your strength and your love is bringing tears to everybody’s eyes,” a teary Jaffe told Thompson as the impromptu service ended.
“Two weeks ago, we knew we were meeting at the end of this month, and this horrific crime happened — that pains the soul of everybody,” Jaffe said of Grandmother’s LOV. “To think that old people could be tied up and hurt like that and victimized is just heartbreaking.”
Grandmother’s LOV members are women who have lost children to street violence and are rasing their grandchildren, as well as women who have lost grandchildren to the streets. The group calls for gun control and a reduction in gang violence throughout the five boroughs. Waldiman Thompson’s heart gave out after Dwayne Blackwood, 27, and a second person burst into his brownstone home, police said.Blackwood and his accomplice snuck in and threw pillowcases over their victims’ heads as they tied them down, according to police.
Ethlin Thompson managed to escape and run out for help. Medics rushed her husband of about 30 years to Interfaith Medical Center, where he died.
On Monday, police arrested Suzette Troutman, Blackwood’s aunt and the Thompsons’ home aide, and charged her with murder. Troutman had helped the couple with odd jobs, as well as shopping and housekeeping,
On the day of the break-in, with a small child in tow, Troutman allegedly drove Blackwood and the second, unidentified, thief to the Thompsons’ home, telling them the couple had money stashed in a lock box.
During her arraignment Monday, a judge ordered Troutman held without bail.
The widow’s family was stunned by Troutman’s arrest.
“This was a woman my aunt trusted,” said Thompson’s great niece Doreen Hunter. “For her to do this, to set her up, it’s terrible.”