Home Aide Arraigned After Fatal Attack On Elderly Bed-Stuy Man

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — A home aide of the 91-year-old man killed during a home invasion in October has been arraigned on murder charges, officials said.

Suzette Troutman, 45, was charged with murder, assault and burglary on Friday for her role in the Bed-Stuy robbery that cost Waldiman Thompson his life and 100-year-old Ethline Thompson her husband on Oct. 11, said prosecutors.

Troutman helped her 27-year-old nephew Dwayne Blackwood and another man plan the violent robbery and provided them with a getaway car, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.

Blackwood was arraigned on murder charges Tuesday and both he and his aunt were held without bail, prosecutors said. The third robber has not yet been apprehended.

Surveillance video taken just before the attack shows Blackwood and his accomplice getting out of a black Nissan Rouge, driven by Troutman, on a street corner near the Thompson's home, court records show.

The two men allegedly entered the house, tied up Waldiman Thompson with cord and a threw a sheet over his head, the shock of which sent him into cardiac arrest, said prosecutors.

Thompson's widow eventually escaped to seek help, said prosecutors, but emergency responders who found her husband lying unconscious on the floor were unable to save his life.

Surveillance video taken outside Blackwood's home after the attack shows Troutman, Blackwood, the third suspect and a child unloading numerous items from the Nissan into a black garbage bag and into Blackwood's home.

Prosecutors believe one of those items is the lock box that Ethline Thompson reported stolen and which Blackwood can be seen carrying in surveillance footage captured days after the attack.

Blackwood was arrested on Friday, the same day of Thompson's funeral, where friends and family mourned what the Hanson Place S.D.A. Church first elder Jeremiah Cox called, "a diabolic attack perpetrated on an innocent child of god."

Blackwood's attorney Christopher Booth told Patch, "We will be fighting the case every step of the way."

Troutman's attorney was not immediately available to comment but, when she was arrested in October, he told the New York Post his client was innocent.

“She didn’t plan it," said Watts. "She didn’t assist it.”

Troutman is expected to return to court on Feb. 2, said prosecutors.

Photo by Kathleen Culliton and courtesy of the Thompson Family