Family friend of pensioner Tommy Ward offers £5,000 reward to find his attacker

Ryan Bevan, aged 36, said that he is close to ex-soldier Tommy’s family and employs his grandson Luke through his garage business Maltby Tyre Services.

Tommy Ward, 80, was left with fighting for his life after violent thieves made off with his life savings. He died last week after five months in hospital.

Ryan said the appeal and reward money is his way of putting the crime back into the public eye after Mr Ward’s death as his attacker has not been caught.

He said: “It’s a way to get people to think back and put some pressure on South Yorkshire Police.

“It has been difficult. The family are never going to get closure if they are never found. It could have been anyone’s elderly parent or grandad. Tommy was a lovely guy and his family are doing everything they can to find out what happened to him.

“He couldn’t tell them as he couldn’t speak and didn’t know what had happened to him, poor bloke.”

“If they are capable of doing this, they could do it again and who’s to say they hadn’t done it before.

“The people that did this are the kind of people that would turn on each other for money. So hopefully this will help.”

Ryan is urging people to get in touch through his businesses’ facebook page MTS Tyres Exhausts, or if they want to hand in information anonymously they can leave a letter at the garage on Morrell Street in Maltby.

His facebook plea to find the ‘scum’ that attacked Tommy has been shared hundreds of times already.

He said on Facebook: “Someone out there knows something and is protecting the murderer or murderers by keeping quiet, its not honour among thieves, its scum sticking together, whoever is capable of doing something like that to pensioner is not safe to be left in society and needs taking off the streets.”

Ryan said he will hand information over to police.

He said: “It could get a bit like Chinese whispers so we will be careful about what we act on. If people are worried about repercussions, please just leave any information anonymously at the garage. You can post it through the door. I just want to find out who did this.”