British na­tion­al Sal­ly Wil­son, who was in­jured in a Box­ing Day rob­bery at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah has ex­pressed deep grat­i­tude to lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and cit­i­zens who ren­dered as­sis­tance dur­ing her trau­mat­ic or­deal.

The 72-year-old rob­bery vic­tim ex­tend­ed her pro­found ap­pre­ci­a­tion to act­ing British High Com­mis­sion­er Beat­rice Rose dur­ing a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion. Wil­son thanked every­one who came to her as­sis­tance af­ter the in­ci­dent.

Sal­ly and her 74-year-old hus­band Michael were walk­ing along the sa­van­nah to view the Mag­ni­fi­cient Sev­en build­ings and oth­er tourist at­trac­tions when they were ap­proached by a man armed with a knife.

The ban­dit cut the strap of Sal­ly’s hand­bag to steal her be­long­ings.

Dur­ing the rob­bery, Sal­ly was slashed on her left arm and had to be tak­en via taxi to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where she suc­cess­ful­ly un­der­went surgery and was dis­charged.

Micheal, who was un­hurt, was ac­com­mo­dat­ed at a ho­tel.

The Wilsons chose to vis­it the Caribbean on a cruise to cel­e­brate their 50th wed­ding an­niver­sary yes­ter­day. The cou­ple was among hun­dreds of cruise pas­sen­gers who ar­rived on the MSC Preziosa hours ear­li­er.

In giv­ing an up­date on the con­di­tion of Sal­ly, an of­fi­cial at the British High Com­mis­sion­er told Guardian Me­dia that the cou­ple has been mak­ing arrange­ments to re­turn to the Unit­ed King­dom.

Sal­ly is said to be re­cov­er­ing from her in­juries.

“In their con­ver­sa­tion with the act­ing High Com­mis­sion­er the cou­ple thanked the po­lice, hos­pi­tal staff and cit­i­zens who showed com­pas­sion dur­ing their or­deal,” the of­fi­cial said.

Since the in­ci­dent, the com­mis­sion’s staff has been in con­stant con­tact with the Wilsons.

The of­fi­cial said the High Com­mis­sion en­cour­ages all British na­tion­als vis­it­ing T&T to look at T&T’s trav­el ad­vi­sories.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell did not re­spond yes­ter­day to a What­sapp mes­sage sent by Guardian Me­dia but pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed con­cern about the in­ci­dent, stat­ing that vis­i­tors would have been look­ing for­ward to their trip on­ly to have it ru­ined by an act of vi­o­lence.