SANCTUARY LOST: Another elderly woman has been the victim of thefts and a home invasion and is scared to be alone in her home. Photo: Geoff O’Neill 241012GOC01
YET another elderly Tamworth resident is living in fear after a number of break-ins and attempted home invasions in the past month.
The woman, in her 80s, who was too frightened to be named, said she was frightened to stay alone in the house that has been her home since 1978.
“It’s pretty scary because I go to bed between 10pm and 10.30pm and it’s very scary to be here alone,” she said.
“I don’t want to go to bed because I’m scared to go to sleep so I can’t sleep.
"Life is not the same because I have no serenity and no security in my own home.
"I’m now thinking of selling, but I don’t want to because I love this house.
"These people are disrupting people’s lives.”
The woman had her iPad stolen and home damaged on October 9 while she was gardening outside her home.
“I noticed a man standing at my gate and he’d been there for sometime,” she said.
“I thought he was waiting for a car to pick him up. I came close to the gate and he said hello, so I said hello. He then disappeared.
"When I came inside for lunch I noticed my iPad was gone from where I had it on the end of the lounge where I’d had breakfast.”
The woman said she phoned police but told them they didn’t need to send a car because he’d gone.
“I looked out the kitchen window and he was standing between my door and the car, so I flew out the back and screamed out, ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ and he ran down Kent St,” she said.
She decided to check the rest of the house, frightened that someone else might be in there.
She went up the stairs and a large blind in her dressing room was up and the drapes had fallen down.
“He’d been right through the house,” she said.
“I phoned the police again and they came out.”
That night at about 10.30pm she thought she would check the window locks in her room before she went to bed, and found that they’d been damaged.
The police returned and fixed the window so it could be locked and told the woman the intruder had probably damaged the locks to gain access at a later time.
On Thursday, October 18, as the woman was walking through the house to go to bed, she heard a loud noise at a downstairs window that sounded like someone was trying to get in.
A neighbour later told her she heard someone at the window.
The woman and her daughter have been visiting the neighbours and said they had similar stories to tell of attempted and successful break-ins.
They also told her of an assault on a man on a mobility scooter near her home.
Neighbours have also told them they have seen people at the woman’s windows trying to break in and have scared them off.
These are not the first instances of theft at the home, with her daughter’s car opened and items including a GPS stolen from it about six months ago.
Prior to that she has had items stolen from outside the home and a large break-in and theft many years ago when she and her husband were on holidays.
The woman has had an electrician make adjustments to security lights outside her home so they light up larger areas and deter people trying to get in the windows, but is scared to sleep at night.
The woman and her daughter are hoping to attend the NSW Cabinet meeting being held in Tamworth to have their say on law-and-order issues.
