101 year-old war veteran sees off drug addict
A 101-year-old war hero fought off a robber who snatched £300 after tricking his way into his home.
Brave Kazimierz Michalski grabbed Stephen Gillespie in a bear hug as he tried to make off with the veteran’s wallet, a court heard.
Although the 47-year-old coward managed to flee, Mr Michalski, a Polish Army veteran, gave police enough information to catch him.
As Gillespie was yesterday jailed for three years after admitting theft at Oxford Crown Court, Mr Michalski said: “I hope this is a lesson to him.”
He added: “I put my arms around him. His eyes were wide, his face was red and he was short of breath. I didn’t want to suffocate him. He was a weakling in comparison to me.”
Mr Michalski eventually let go and Gillespie ran away. “I couldn’t chase after him because I am 101,” he said.
“I used to be a boxer and I wish I was a few years younger – then things would have been different. I would have massacred his face.”
Mr Michalski, a retired librarian, met the villain at a church service in St Giles, Oxford, in March and Gillespie offered to fix his roof. Police found his fingerprints and arrested him two weeks later.
Judge Mark Ockelton told him: “You saw him as an easy target. He appeared old, which he was, and frail, which he evidently was not.”
Ex-drug addict Gillespie, of Wolvercote, Oxon, was on early release from prison for a burglary offence.
Born in Poland in 1908, Mr Michalski was evacuated to Czechoslovakia during the First World War.
The Russians sent him to a labour camp in a purge of intellectuals. Freed in 1941, he served in the Polish Army against Germany in Africa, the Middle East and Italy.
In 1946 he took his family to England, settling in Oxford in 1953. In 2004 he celebrated his 70th wedding anniversary to wife Janina.