83-year-old Texas woman fends off burglar in front of dying husband
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MaryAnn Martinez, KTVT
FORT WORTH, Texas (KTVT) — An elderly woman survived a physical struggle with a burglar as her husband laid on his deathbed.
In the end, the 83-year-old was able to fend him off, but the intruder stole the family truck.
Startled and scared, Suzy Alummuttil found herself face-to-face with a stranger in her Fort Worth home Dec. 10. She was lying a hospital bed in her living room. Next to her, her husband, John, who had just returned home from hospice care.
“He saw (the intruder), but he could not talk,” she said.
She cried as she recounted how her dying husband watched as the man ransacked their home. Surveillance video shows him pushing their door in, left open for the hospice nurse they were expecting. The man searched the house until Suzy tried to called 911 and her son for help. Suzy said he walked over to her and tried to take the phone away, but she refused.
The intruder left with keys to the family’s Chevy Silverado. He had driven the pickup truck away by the time Suzy and John’s son arrived at the house. The son was panicked after getting a call from his mother as she was wrestling with the burglar.
“All I could hear was some sort of a struggle. (It) is what I can best explain it as,” said their son, Saji Alummuttil.
Although the couple was scared, they were not harmed. The day after the robbery, husband and father John Alummuttil died.
“The break in is also one of his last memories, assuming that he was not really cognizant,” said Saji. “We had a hard week last week.”
The family is hoping someone will see the video and recognize the burglar. Saji says he installed the doorbell camera two days before the burglary because he was trying to keep an eye on his elderly parents.