Elderly Man Brutally Beaten in Home Invasion

Patrick Grant

In a sickening home invasion a Belize City elderly man is left in a coma and hospitalized at the K.H.M.H. Patrick Grant was violently attacked over the weekend and robbed of personal items. Grant was found outside his house, but he was brutally beaten inside his house in the Lake Independence area.  Family members say blood was splattered everywhere inside the small house. Even worse, police found a used condom in the mess left behind. News Five’s Isani Cayetano reports.

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Ninety-three-year-old Patrick Grant, a resident of Fern Lane, remains in a coma tonight, after being viciously assaulted by an intruder who broke into his home on Sunday.  The elderly man, a fixture in this neighborhood, would often be seen sitting in this white, plastic chair.  On mornings when he was not staring out to the adjacent street, he would be fully occupied with a weed whacker, methodically trimming his lawn.  While most were still enjoying or recovering from the weekend activities, son-in-law Carlos Diaz was informed of a most disturbing incident.

Carlos Diaz, Son-in-law

“I got a call twenty minutes to six on Sunday morning, saying that somebody had broken into my father-in-law’s house and caused a lot of damage to his house and to his person.  So we went over there.  When I got there I met him sitting in a chair in front of the house.  He was badly beaten, all his whole face was covered in blood, body covered in blood and I don’t know how he got outside of the house but he managed to get outside and sat in the chair where he got somebody’s attention who called me.”

The nonagenarian had been beaten to a bloody pulp, a number of his personal belongings stolen from his bungalow during the home invasion.

Carlos Diaz

Carlos Diaz

“Looking at the house, there’s a trail of blood from his bedroom to the front door, big splatter of blood all the way down.  There was blood on a sofa chair he had in his house, blood everywhere, blood everywhere.  It was a mess and he was sitting there couldn’t even speak.  The door of the house was not breached from the lock that held the door; the whole section of that panel of the door was broken off.  So it’s not a failure of the lock.  The lock was locked, the panel of the door was broken off so it needed extreme force of one person or one or more persons to break off that front panel that held the lock.”

After gaining entrance to the property, the thief helped himself to Grant’s possessions, but not before physically assaulting the senior citizen and reportedly sodomizing him.

Carlos Diaz

“They found used condoms with semen in the house and condom wrappings and the chair, like I told you, the chair that he was sitting in, when he got up, when they took him up to put him in the ambulance there was blood, a lot of blood in the chair.  So I cannot say anything positive to that until we get a report from the medical authorities and they are not in any hurry to do that.  They say they have more important things to do.  My wife has requested it from them, but they say they have more important things to do, so we can’t do anything more than that.  That’s just speculation.”

Isani Cayetano

“In terms of the police investigation, have they mentioned to you if they are looking for someone of interest?  What have they shared with you?”

Carlos Diaz

“Well, while we were there Sunday morning they went across the street and they brought out a guy who was, I would say they’d call him a person of interest, you know, and he was arrested and taken to the station.  I don’t know what became of him since then, I haven’t seen or heard from him since then.”

Reporting for News Five, I am Isani Cayetano.