Terrified OAP dies after five burglaries (From Bury Times)

Terrified OAP dies after five burglaries

9:03am Thursday 5th November 2009

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A PENSIONER who locked himself in his home after he was targeted by burglars five times in three months has been found dead.

Friends of Vincent Adcock say he had “lost the will to live” and had begun starving himself.

Police officers were called to the 74-year-old’s house in East Street when worried neighbours had not seen him for four days.

Officers had to break down the front door to get into the house on October 21 and discovered Mr Adcock collapsed upstairs.

He was taken to Fairfield General Hospital but died the next day from kidney failure and malnutrition.

Speaking exclusively to the Bury Times, close friend Margaret Boswell said Mr Adcock had been driven to his death by the intruders.

Mrs Boswell, of Spring Street, Bury, said: “He was a man that kept himself to himself, all he loved was his dogs. But after five break-ins he had just given up. He stopped going out and didn’t buy any food because he `couldn’t leave the house.”

Mr Adcock was a well-known figure in East Bury where he had lived for more than 50 years. He would have celebrated his 75th birthday on Boxing Day.

Shocked neighbours say they would chat to him as he walked his beloved Alsatian dog Prince around the area several times a day.

But at about 2pm on August 15 this year, the victim returned home to find thieves raiding his home. Police say they fled without stealing, but his property had been burgled on four previous occasions.

It is understood thieves stole a phone, CDs, cash and a watch worth £800 during the first break-in.

On another occasion, they struck when the victim was shopping, this time locking Prince inside and getting away with more CDs. More cash and valuabes were stolen while Mr Adcock was having a check-up at the hospital.

A surveillance camera was installed to help catch the thieves, but neighbours say Mr Adcock had become so depressed he forgot to change the tapes and recordings were automatically wiped every 24 hours.

They say he had become a “hermit” and refused to leave the house through fear of being broken into again.

But that didn’t stop a couple tricking their way into Mr Adcock’s house, when a woman knocked on the front door and said her son’s ball had gone into his back garden, while a man broke in through the back and stole the victim’s coat.

One neighbour said: “We tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t even answer the door. He was terribly depressed and he wasn’t eating. All he wanted to do was sleep. He was very thin and stopped walking his dog.”

Following Mr Adcock’s death, Prince became distressed and had to put down a few days later.

Mr Adcock worked at Olive’s Paper Mill until he was made redundant when the mill closed in the late 1990s. Since then he had enjoyed a routine lifestyle, visiting Bennett’s Butchers and Asda, in Spring Street, each morning and Thompsons’ chippy, in Rochdale Road, on Tuesdays.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman confirmed: “Sometime between 2pm and 2.20pm on August 15, a 74-year-old man disturbed intruders in his home in East Street. The offenders fled without stealing anything.

“The address had been the subject of four other burglaries in the few months leading up to the last incident.”

There is no known family of the victim and it will be up to Social Services to arrange Mr Adcock’s funeral unless a relative comes forward.

Anyone with information is asked to call the coroner’s office on 0161 856 8097.

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