In the “There’s Gotta Be a Special Place in the Inner Ring of Hell with Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and ’em” files, an elderly Brooklyn, N.Y., couple were robbed and one of them was killed in a home invasion earlier this week. It goes without saying that whoever did it needs an express one-way ticket to Satan’s lair.
Ethlin Thompson, 100, and her 91-year-old husband, Wadiman Thompson, who died in the attack, were the victims of the break-in in their brownstone in the New York City borough’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood on Wednesday. About 3 p.m., intruders pushed into the couple’s home and bound them. Ethlin Thompson freed herself from the restraints and called 911.
When police officers arrived, they found Wadiman Thompson inside and still bound; he was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.
According to NY 1, the medical examiner says that Wadiman suffered a sudden cardiac arrest because of restraint in a person with hypertensive and cardiovascular disease. His death was ruled a homicide.
“Whoever did this, it’s evil, it’s evil in their heart,” said I.C. Serapio, a neighbor, who was in tears, according to the Times. “They are in their last days. It is not fair; you just took this man’s life.”
Ethlin was 69 when she met the younger man (he was 60) at a bus stop. They soon married and from that day were “inseparable,” holding court from the steps of their brownstone, overseeing their potted-plant garden and calling each other “honey,” according to the New York Times.
The couple were Seventh-day Adventists and long retired. Wadiman Thompson was from Jamaica and worked as a machinist; his wife was born in Costa Rica and migrated to Jamaica. She is a retired teacher.
Neighbors say that each morning, Wadiman sat in a chair that his wife brought out for him so that he could shake hands with neighbors as they left for work. After he began to use a cane last year, Ethlin, who turned 100 on March 8, did the sweeping around the brownstone every morning.
She taught Bible study and helped perform baptisms. Of the attack, the Times reports:
On Wednesday, Ms. Thompson was sitting on her bed next to her husband, who was lying awake, putting on her shoes to go out and pay bills, said Margaret Babb, a clerk at the Hanson Place Church who visited her in the hospital. Ms. Thompson told Ms. Babb she was ambushed from behind and someone tried to choke and muzzle her simultaneously.
“She said, ‘I fought and I fought, they tied me, they bound my hands, they bound my feet, but eventually I was able to break free and call 911,’” Ms. Babb said. “I’m sure they didn’t expect her to be so feisty.”
According to NY1, Wadiman Thompson went into cardiac arrest, and the New York Daily News says that $5,000 in cash was taken from the ransacked home.
No arrests have been made, but some on social media say that they heard helicopters in the neighborhood that day, possibly as part of the investigation.
The Daily News reports that Ethlin Thompson is “in denial” about her husband. “She keeps asking for him,” according to a police source.