Elderly widow attacked and robbed of $5,000 she had been saving for late husband's tombstone in Manhattan
Two thieves reportedly robbed an 89-year-old woman of the money she had been saving to buy a headstone for her late husband's grave in a violent attack in her Manhattan apartment, according to police.
Reports state that the two thieves followed the elderly widow, identified as Maximina Osorio, to her home in Jacob Riis Houses on East 10th Street near Avenue D around 11:45 am Saturday. She had just been out grocery shopping and was unlocking the door to her fourth-floor apartment when "two young men" she'd never met before approached her, according to the New York Post.
Osorio, while talking to the outlet, recalled: "They didn’t say anything. One of them pushed me, he covered my eyes and he told me to be quiet. Then he pushed me inside."
According to police, one of the men knocked her down to the floor, shouting: "Where's the money?" "They dragged me the way you drag a sack across the floor," Osorio said, adding that she had cash in a drawer in her bedroom and one of them fled with $5,000. She believes the amount could be more than she estimated.
"It was almost $7,000. I don’t count it,” she explained. “I bring it from the bank and put it there. I didn’t think this was going to happen.”
Osorio reportedly suffered a sore neck and back and told officers that she had been saving the money to buy a headstone for her husband, Salvador Gonzalez, who passed away in December 2017 at the age of 77. Reports state that he is buried at a cemetery in New Jersey.
The 89-year-old, who lives alone and has no children, told the outlet: "I said, ‘What’s this?’ I’ve been here 50 years and I never had this happen." She added that she screamed over and over but no one came to her help, in the end, she called the police herself.
She was subsequently treated at a hospital and released. Meanwhile, authorities are looking for the suspects and have released a video and images of one of them, who has been described as a 5 feet 8, 160 pounds man, with a light complexion and a full beard.