As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and head of the Cen­tral/South Po­lice Di­vi­sion Wayne Mys­tar says el­der­ly peo­ple are be­ing tar­get­ed for home in­va­sions, and he is urg­ing cit­i­zens to pay more at­ten­tion to their vul­ner­a­ble rel­a­tives.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, ACP Mys­tar said while this type of crime is not usu­al­ly di­rect­ly car­ried out by crim­i­nal el­e­ments liv­ing close to their vic­tims, he warned that it is fa­cil­i­tat­ed by peo­ple liv­ing near­by, who ob­serve and give in­for­ma­tion to their co-con­spir­a­tors.

“They are get­ting very in­ti­mate in­for­ma­tion and knowl­edge from per­sons who are in the area,” he con­firmed. “The crim­i­nals are com­ing from out of the zone, but things are be­ing set up by per­sons from with­in the area.

“There is the is­sue of the tar­get­ing of el­der­ly per­sons. Fam­i­ly mem­bers pay at­ten­tion to the el­der­ly,” he urged. “Vis­it them reg­u­lar­ly, be­cause they are one of the tar­get groups that those crim­i­nals are ac­tu­al­ly go­ing af­ter.”

In the last few weeks, there have been sev­er­al home in­va­sions where el­der­ly cit­i­zens have been robbed and beat­en by in­trud­ers.

Over the In­di­an Ar­rival Day hol­i­day, po­lice said a 46-year-old man locked up his St He­le­na apart­ment and left for the day. When he re­turned around 6pm, a door was bro­ken, his bed­room ran­sacked and $100,000 he had se­cured in his bed­room was stolen.

Mean­while, Mys­tar al­so not­ed that in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge in the South­ern Di­vi­sion.

He as­sured, how­ev­er, that po­lice of­fi­cers are tak­ing mea­sures to give an ad­di­tion­al sense of safe­ty to vic­tims and their fam­i­lies.

“We have that is­sue of do­mes­tic mur­ders which we are look­ing at very close­ly,” he stat­ed.

On May 31, 55-year-old Lar­ry Neaves of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro got in­to an ar­gu­ment with his wife, ac­cus­ing her of in­fi­deli­ty. He then be­gan chop­ping the woman. The cou­ple’s 21-year-old son ran to his moth­er’s as­sis­tance, but he too was chopped.

Both the moth­er and son ran out of the house and were as­sist­ed by neigh­bours. Neaves went back in­to the house, which soon was en­gulfed in flames.

Mys­tar said of­fi­cers have been told to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to peo­ple who have ob­tained pro­tec­tion or­ders.

“We’ve asked our po­lice of­fi­cers to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion af­ter a Pro­tec­tion Or­der is is­sued,” he ex­plained. “We have our of­fi­cers vis­it the vic­tims and keep con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them, to as­sure them they are not alone. That brings about a sort of pre­ven­tion ac­tiv­i­ty when the per­pe­tra­tors are look­ing on.”

The se­nior cop re­port­ed that in 2024, there were 35 mur­ders aris­ing out of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sit­u­a­tions, with 15 of those be­ing in the south­ern polic­ing dis­trict.