Bo, 90, was robbed – by fake police: “So incredibly cowardly”

90-year-old Bo Lundgren was robbed in the middle of the day, outside his own elevator.

When Bo tried to resist the two robbers, they knocked him to the ground and stole his wallet.

– I think it’s incredibly cowardly and cold to go after an old man like me, says Bo Lundgren.

On Bo Lundgren’s living room table are several bouquets of flowers in vases. A few days ago he turned 90 and children and grandchildren came to celebrate him.

There is also a photo of his wife on the table. Last winter she passed away and since then the apartment in Gröndal has echoed empty.

– I still think I hear her sometimes from the kitchen. It’s a big adjustment to suddenly be alone after 30 years together, and it’s so boring to cook alone, says Bo Lundgren.

After his wife’s death, the otherwise active Bo became more sedentary, the grief paralyzed him. But before he was robbed, he had just started to get back on track with walks by the nearby lake and gymnastics at home in the apartment.

– After those men jumped on me, I was unfortunately a little too sore to walk any longer distances. It hurts my back and hip, he says.

It was on September 19 that Bo Lundgren was in nearby Liljeholmen to withdraw money from the ATM and buy a lottery ticket, something that the newspaper Mitti was the first to report on. One of the police’s theories is that the robbers saw Bo withdraw money and then followed him home.

Because when Bo was waiting for the elevator in his stairwell, two dark-clad men suddenly approached him.

One of them takes out what looks like a police ID and asks to bring Bo up.

– But I saw that the ID didn’t look quite right. So I told them to go away, says Bo Lundgren.

Then one of the men jumps on Bo. A wrestling match ensues.

Bo, who started his professional life as a soldier and who later became a physical education teacher, has experience in hand-to-hand combat. Some tricks as he says.

– But then the other person gets involved in the whole thing and hits me in some way so I go downhill. If it had only been one, I might have been able to take him, but I didn’t have a chance against both of them, says Bo Lundgren.

The men take Bo’s wallet and run. Bo follows them to see which way they disappear.

At the same time he shouts:

– Help, I’ve been robbed!

A passerby helps Bo alert the police, who are there after just a few minutes.

Because what happened to Bo Lundgren was another robbery in a long line that then affected elderly people in the area.

At the beginning of September, the police in Söderort in Stockholm noticed how a large number of robberies and serious thefts occurred where the crimes had a similar modus operandi and the perpetrators had matching descriptions.

Just two days after Bo was robbed, two men, 22 and 43 years old respectively, were arrested. They are both convicted of numerous thefts and other crimes in the past.

The men are now in custody on suspicion of assaulting eight elderly people, and the suspicions apply to both several cases of robbery and several cases of gross theft.

Bo has to struggle a bit when he has to get up from the sofa to carry out the coffee cups. A photo taken the day after the robbery shows large blue-black bruises across Bo’s leg and hip and they have yet to fade.

When he wrestled with one of the men, he also got a wound in his hand from something sharp that one of the robbers was wearing, but Bo doesn’t know what it was.

– It was still lucky that it didn’t get worse than it did. I could have hit my head instead and who knows how it would have turned out then. I think it’s incredibly cowardly and cold to go after an old man like me, says Bo Lundgren.

He says that after the robbery he mostly felt anger, not fear. But that it has slowly sunk in what happened and how bad it could have gone.

– I’m a little more vigilant now, look over my shoulder more when I’m out. And it’s sad to have to feel that way.

– But I would like to advise other old people that they too should be a little vigilant. Don’t let strangers in the gate. Make sure the door locks behind you. Don’t trust someone to be an official if they can’t produce reliable documentation.

Anders Decker is a police inspector in the Skärholmen local police area who investigates the case against the two suspected robbers.

That this type of crime gets a solution is far from obvious, but in this case there was a lot to go on.

– This series of robberies was geographically limited and the robberies were carried out during the afternoons. There was good information in ongoing preliminary investigations to work on, which led us to arrest two suspects through both investigative work and operational measures. In general, the robberies are otherwise more geographically spread out with occasional robberies that are not on this scale.

Anders Decker says that apart from the wave of robberies in which Bo Lundgren was one of the victims, you don’t otherwise see an increase in robberies against the elderly.

However, fraud against the elderly is something that is increasing sharply.

– The most common are frauds through social manipulation, so-called vishing, where criminals call and pretend to represent, for example, a bank, other company or authority in order to access personal information such as codes, passwords, card details and so on, says Decker.

Bo Lundgren has received a plaintiff’s attorney and later this fall charges may be brought against the two suspected robbers. Then a trial awaits.

– If I’m still alive then, he says with a laugh.

– No then, there is still life in the old man. And I think it’s important that crimes like this don’t go unpunished, so I’ll try to be involved.

FACTA Police’s advice to those who are afraid of being exposed to robbery or fraud:

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