Home Aide Charged With Murder After Fatal Robbery Of Elderly Bed-Stuy Couple, Police Say

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — A home aide of the 91-year-old man killed during a home invasion earlier this month has been charged with murder for her role in the crime, officials said.

Suzette Troutman, 45, helped plan the robbery in Bed-Stuy on Oct. 11 that cost Waldiman Thompson his life and 100-year-old Ethline Thompson her husband, said police and prosecutors.

Troutman, of Canarsie, knew the Thompsons and occasionally helped the elderly couple with errands and tasks around the house, police and prosecutors said.

Watch: Home Aide Charged With Murder After Fatal Robbery Of Elderly Bed-Stuy Couple, Police Say

Prosecutors believe Troutman told her 27-year-old nephew Dwayne Blackwood — who was charged with murder on Friday — and another man where to find the Thompson’s money and provided them with a getaway car, according to the criminal complaint.

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.

Ethline Thompson was also tied up with a belt and the men threatened to kill her if she didn’t “shut up,” prosecutors said.

Thompson 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 pleaded not guilty and his attorney Christopher Booth told Patch, “We will be fighting the case every step of the way.”

Troutman was arraigned on charges of murder, assault and burglary in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Monday night and held without bail, according to police.

Troutman’s attorney was not immediately available to comment.

Photo by Kathleen Culliton and courtesy of the Thompson Family