A £10,000 (€12,300) reward has been offered in a bid to catch a burglar who murdered a pensioner as he struggled to protect his disabled wife earlier this week.
Bertie Acheson (72) collapsed and died after confronting the intruder in his home in Coleraine, Co Derry. A postmortem found he had a heart attack.
The burglar then snatched a purse containing £375 belonging to Mr Acheson’s wife, Sheila (70), who was in the bedroom of the couple’s Glenmore Gardens home. She suffers from severe arthritis, and her husband was her primary carer.
Police are treating the pensioner’s death early on Monday morning as murder.
Independent charity Crimestoppers has put up the reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the attacker.
Chairman of the Crimestoppers Northern Ireland committee Paul Leighton said: “This was a cowardly act carried out against two vulnerable people and has left a community badly shaken and extremely angry.
“The person who committed this crime should not be allowed to get away with it and must be brought to justice, so I am appealing for anyone with information to contact Crimestoppers anonymously. We don’t want to know who you are, only what you know.”
The suspect is described as being approximately 6ft, was wearing a dark top with a collar and thick cuffs, grey jogging bottoms and a coat covering his waist.
Mr Acheson’s daughter, Sandra Creelman, spoke of the family’s devastation. “This has been a nightmare. A total and utter living nightmare. Our lives have just been ruined. It will never be the same again, never. Not for any of us,” she said yesterday.
Mrs Creelman added: “Mum will never be in her home again. She is terrified [of] going back. They stripped my mother of everything she held dear and loved her whole life. The person that did this has destroyed everything. Mr and Mrs Acheson had been married for 44 years.
Police believe the burglar lives locally and may have cut himself before fleeing.
Crimestoppers can be contacted anonymously on 0800 555 111 or through a secure online form at www.crimestoppers-uk.org.
PA