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Elderly Queens Woman Fights Off Home Intruder

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Jan 5, 2009 5:54 am US/Eastern

Elderly Queens Woman Fights Off Home Intruder

Reporting
Deborah Garcia

NEW YORK (CBS) ―

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Residents of a close-knit Queens community are living in fear after a grandmother was attacked during a home invasion.

In the early hours of the morning, before it was light, a man broke into a home on 134th Avenue.

Once inside, he stabbed and slashed 86-year-old Vivian Squire in the neck and throat.

"She's neighborly, good friend," friend Maudise Cornwall says. "She lives there basically alone."

"People around here are pretty close-knit; all the neighbors pretty much know each other, watch out for each other," neighbor Eric Cans says. "This is pretty tragic, what happened this morning."

Squires has been a fixture in the South Jamaica neighborhood for decades.

Friends and neighbors say she used to work for the women's corrections department and was a mother and grandmother – a nice person who lived alone but rented to tenants who lived above and below her.

"She's a nice lady – in fact, she lived here when we moved in 35 years ago," neighbor William Pinckney said. "She's a very nice lady, [and] I feel sorry for her."

Police believe the man that broke in acted alone and sped away in the victim's tan Chrysler sedan.

"Unfortunately, I have camera on my house but they aren't working right now," Dans said. "So I am pretty upset with myself right now, that I didn't have them on."

The whole neighborhood is upset and very surprised that an elderly woman would be attacked inside her home.

"[It's] scary," Cornwall says. "You just don't have this in this neighborhood."

Police are still searching for clues, evidence, and the person who stabbed the 86-year-old woman.

Squires remains hospitalized, and is reported to be in stable condition.

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