HOME-INVADE HEARTACHE
Victim, 100, pleads to see hub who died
The 100-year-old woman whose husband died during a terrifying Brooklyn home invasion was choked until she passed out — and desperately asked for him at the hospital, relatives said Thursday.
“She has not accepted the fact that my father has passed, even though many people have already told her this,” Delroy Thompson, 68, of Florida told The Post by phone about his heartbroken stepmother, Ethlin Thompson.
Delroy, whose dad, Waldiman Thompson, 91, was killed, said Ethlin keeps asking, “Where is he? When can I see him? When can I talk to my husband?”
Ethlin, who was released Thursday from Kings County Hospital, and her husband were in their Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday when thugs sneaked in and hogtied the couple, she told investigators.
The crooks threw a blanket over Ethlin and tied her up with a cord before moving on to Waldiman, police said.
They rummaged through the home and fled.
Ethlin was choked so fiercely that she passed out. When she awoke, her husband of 30 years was dead on the floor, family members said.
“She is bruised pretty badly. She was choked and hit on her mouth,” Ethlin’s nephew, David Ebanks, said.
Ethlin used scissors to cut the cord binding her ankles and fled the Decatur Street building while calling for help.
Waldiman’s cause of death was determined to be a heart attack, the city medical examiner said.
Ethlin initially told police that four goons had burglarized the home, but surveillance footage showed only two men leaving the building, one wearing a backpack and the other holding the lockbox where the couple kept their cash, sources said.
The couple lived on the ground floor and owned the brownstone, collecting rent from three tenants. They apparently had about $5,000 in the house, a high-ranking police source said.
Cops on Wednesday night questioned and released Ethlin’s 61year-old great-nephew, who was at the home 30 minutes before the crime. He remains a person of interest, police sources said.
“There was no forced entry and the only other person who had a key was him,” a police source said.
Delroy said he asked detectives to “grill him to the ultimate.”
“It is very suspicious to me,” Delroy said. “I am suspicious because my stepmother would always lock the doors when anyone would leave the house.
“I think when he departed, he left the door open,” Delroy said.
Police will soon do a walkthrough of the home with Ethlin, sources said.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams announced Thursday that he’s putting up a $1,000 reward for any information that leads to the arrests and convictions of the invaders.