By Stephanie L. Arnold
Inquirer Staff Writer
Roused from his sleep early yesterday morning, 90-year-old William Lane struggled to catch his bearings so he could determine what was making the shuffling noise in his bedroom.
When he sat up on the side of his bed - groggy and in darkness - he saw two strange men going through his belongings. It was not quite 1 a.m., and they wanted money.
When he didn’t produce, they punched the West Philadelphia man in the nose and continued their business.
“They got what little bit of money I had in there, then they went out of here,” Lane said in a telephone interview last night.
Police said the burglars made off with $300, Lane’s wallet, and his bank book.
Other than a sore nose and the ransacked mess the burglars left behind, Lane said, “there wasn’t too much damage.”
While the encounter yielded no serious injuries, it was enough to move officers in the Philadelphia Public Affairs Unit to act.
The staff of five were so touched by what happened to Lane that they all donated money to replace what had been taken.
“You have a 90-year-old gentleman, who not only gets robbed during the holiday season, but gets beaten up,” said Inspector William Colarulo, who heads the unit. “Sometimes we don’t realize how fortunate we are until you see what some people have to endure.”
Colarulo and his staff - Cpl. Jim Pauley and Officers Maria Ibrahim, Jillian Russell and Sheila Smith - signed a card and enclosed $300. The detective assigned to the case delivered the card and the money to Lane’s home yesterday afternoon.
The card read: “We at the Police Public Affairs Office hope that you can keep the holiday spirit in light of what happened to you... “
Lane said he would.
Philadelphia Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/)