She survived the Holocaust only to die aged 100 when a mugger attacked her in street
A HEROIN addict who robbed a 100-year-old widow of her handbag was warned yesterday he faces a lengthy jail sentence after he was found guilty of killing her.
Artur Waszkiewicz, 40, left churchgoer Zofija Kaczan with a fractured neck, cheekbone and extensive bruising when he knocked her to the ground and ripped her inexpensive green handbag from her arm.
Mrs Kaczan, who settled in the UK in 1948 after escaping Nazi- occupied Poland, was found in the street leaning against a car with blood pouring from a wound on her head in a crime which shocked the community and left police officers in tears.
She was helped to her church and then taken to hospital but died nine days later on June 6 after developing pneumonia.
Waszkiewicz, also originally from Poland, had been a heroin addict since he was 18 and was ‘desperate’ for a hit when he came across ‘easy target’ Mrs Kaczan in the street in Derby. She was known to carry a large amount of cash in her handbag because she did not trust banks.
Waszkiewicz dumped his car after attacking her, and later shaved off his thick black hair and fled to London to try to avoid detection. But he was arrested after he was found hiding under a bed at his mother’s house in the capital.
He admitted being in the area but claimed he found Mrs Kaczan’s handbag in the road. He was found guilty of robbery and manslaughter yesterday after a jury deliberated for less than three hours.
Mrs Kaczan’s friends wept as the verdict was read out. They had followed the two-week trial from the public gallery, hearing graphic details of how their friend was attacked as she crossed the road in front of Waszkiewicz’s car.
The robbery left her ‘ confused and scared’ her friends said, but, in an incredible act, she prayed for forgiveness for her attacker from her hospital bed. They said it was a devout The typical ‘remarkable’ Catholic. act of kindness woman from was the born part of in Poland. the town She of witnessed Brody, once her younger brother being killed in the street by Nazi soldiers, and was sent to work making nails and porcelain in a forced labour camp.
A date was even set for her execution, an anniversary she would remember when she was older, but she somehow escaped death and fled to England at the end of the war, with her then partner Mikolaj, Normanton married worked but the couple for eventually in Rolls-Royce area 1953 never of and settling had Derby. in he children. the in They later city the Mr Her Kaczan church died said aged she had 92 in ‘found 2009. a degree of stability and tranquillity’ in Derby after the trauma of her early life. The pensioner walked every day to church and to the shops, and enjoyed playing bingo and having her hair done. She was said to be in good health despite celebrating her 100th birthday just days before the robbery, when she had been delighted to receive a letter from the Pope. On the day of the attack, May 28 last year, she left home as usual not long after 8.30am to make her way to the local Polish church for mass at 9am and was caught on a neighbour’s CCTV camera, wearing her white headscarf. A friend found her in the street a short time later, holding the same scarf to her face as she tried to stem the flow of blood from a cut on her head. After being taken to hospital, she was discharged to a rehabilitation centre but her condition deteriorated.
A pathologist told the court there was a ‘ direct correlation’ between Mrs Kaczan’s death and the injuries she suffered in the robbery. Before she died she told police how she was attacked from behind and so did not see or hear her attacker.
It is not known how much money was taken, but she had previously been known to carry as much as £500 in her handbag.
Waszkiewicz, who moved to the UK with his mother in 1996, put his hand to his mouth and shook his head as the verdict was read out.
Mrs Kaczan’s friend Anna Zimand said the horrors the widow witnessed as a young woman were ‘indescribable’. ‘That she was able to survive shows what strength of character she had,’ she said. ‘There are no winners in this case. I think she would have actually felt sorry for him.
‘We are pleased justice has been done, I am just so sad her remarkable life had to end in this way.’
Waszkiewicz will be sentenced this morning.
‘Police left in tears’