67-year-old burglary victim dies of shock

London Evening Standard/London

A pensioner who collapsed and died after finding his home had been ransacked by burglars called his wife to say “we have lost everything”, his family revealed.

Stanley Amarasinghe, 67, returned to his home in south Croydon with his three sons to discover that burglars had raided every room.

They stole all of his wife’s jewellery, thousands of pounds of savings and his son’s piggy bank, which contained more than £2,000 in coins.

Amarasinghe collapsed and told his sons to call an ambulance and the police. He later died in hospital and a post-mortem examination found that he died of heart failure.

Sri Lanka-born Amarasinghe, who was known to his friends as Sana, had a triple heart-bypass within the last two years and had since cut back on his work as a plumber.

His wife Renuka, 47, was at work as a carer in a nearby care home when he called her to tell the house had been raided. She said: “I am still in shock. He was a wonderful person and a wonderful father to his children. I hope whoever did this comes to understand what we have now lost.”

Friends said that on the day of his death, Amarasinghe drove his sister-in-law to her mother’s grave and visited the Buddhist temple in Selsdon, where his three sons attended drum practice before taking them home.

His eldest son, Gayan, who turned 16 last week, said: “The first thing we saw was the drinks from our drinks cupboard smashed all over the floor. We walked into the kitchen and the cupboards were all open and the window was smashed. Everything was trashed.

“We went upstairs and again, everything was open, it looked as if they had taken everything.” He said his father began “breathing strangely” after calling his mother and then collapsed.