£5,000 reward to catch Tommy's killers

Ryan Bevan, who runs Maltby Tyre Services, said he wanted to jog the memory of anyone who may know what happened when 80-year-old Tommy was attacked at his home in the town by raiders who stole his £30,000 life savings and left him for dead.

Former soldier Tommy died with his family at his bedside at Rotherham Hospital last Tuesday  - almost five months after he was brutally attacked.

“The kind of people who could know who did this might sit up and take notice at this amount of money,” said Mr Bevan.

“After Tommy died last week, there’s a danger things could go a bit quiet but I want to keep the appeal in the public eye.

“It’s important to the people of Maltby because Tommy’s killers are still out there.

“Catching them would also give his family some sort of closure.”

Mr Bevan said Tommy’s grandson Luke Ward, who works for one of his businesses, and daughter Jackie Perry had both given their backing to the fresh appeal.

“Tommy was never able to talk about what happened to him or even say how many people were involved,” said Mr Bevan (36), who has lived in Maltby since the mid-1980s and runs several businesses.

“The killers are still out there and if these people can do this to an innocent man in his own home, who is to say they have not done it before and they can’t do it again?”

Mr Bevan said the failure so far to catch Tommy’s killers - with four people arrested but later released - meant people in Maltby were “losing faith” in the police, particularly when no suspect has been identified for a rape in Grange Lane and a robbery at a family home in Tickhill Road a month later.

He said a neighbour of Mr Ward’s on Salisbury Road had offered police the chance to view his CCTV footage following the attack on October 1 but it had taken a month for officers to come out, by which time the footage had been recorded over.

Mr Bevan said he and others were also disappointed that Tommy’s case had not been featured on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme.

He added: “I don’t want to be having a go at the police but I do think there are questions they should be asked.”

Det Chief Inspector Vicky Short said the police investigation surrounding what happened is “very much ongoing” and appealed for anyone with “even the slightest piece of information” to come forward and call 101 or email [email protected], quoting incident 408 of October 1, 2015. 

Alternatively, call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

A formal coroner’s investigation was launched this week, with a postmortem due to signal whether an inquest will be held.