Oct 13, 2005 9:25 am US/Eastern
KDKA's David Highfield reports that an elderly woman became a victim of a home invasion.
Police say three "gypsies" tricked the woman into letting them into her home on Wednesday afternoon.
The woman realized something was wrong when the men were inside her home.
She reached for the phone to call for help, but they ripped the cord out and then knocked her to ground.
She came over to my place and asked to use the phone that she had been robbed, a neighbor said. I sat her down and she was shaking a lot.
A 74-year old woman who lives alone in Ross Township near Route 279.
Three men knocked on her door.
They told her they worked for the city and they needed to check her water pressure because of some nearby construction, said Ross Township police detective Bill Barrett.
Not wanting to be rude, the woman let them in.
The robbers knocked her to the floor, ordered her to stay there, said they had guns and demanded to know where her valuables were.
They meet the criteria for what's commonly referred to as gypsies - people that travel around and do these types of crimes, Barrett said.
The robbers don't know it, but along with other valuables, they stole a Christmas gift from the victim's dying husband.
Her husband had passed recently and he bought her a nice big TV and they took that, the neighbor said. And she was very upset because that's how she spends her evenings.
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EDITORIAL COMMENT:
So Gypsies, according Detective Barrett, are people that travel around and do these types of crimes. Maybe Det. Barrett wants to have a word with true Gypsies. I would be happy to connect with him via the Internet, as neither he nor I live in the same area let alone the same continent even.
