The friends and neighbours of feisty 95-year-old Daisy Allen have this week voiced their disgust at the sentence meted out to her drug-addict attackers.

Residents living in the close-knit community of Addington Road in Croydon say their elderly neighbour's life has been ruined by vicious thugs Gooding and Johnson.

Daisy Allen is a well-known and well-liked character on Addington Road. Even at the age of 95, she would be regularly seen walking up and down the street and in her back garden chopping wood. A lot of the residents living in Addington Road have lived there for decades and are totally stunned at the ferocity of her attack.

Pensioner Winifred Hubbart was shocked when she heard the sentence and said: "Nine years? They should have been strung up in my opinion. How could anyone drag an 95-year-old woman across the landing with a pillow across her face? Now she's too scared to come home."

Close friend Grace Lane regularly visits Daisy at her nursing home in Bromley and said: "I was always dreading something like this would happen. I used to tell her again and again not to open the door to people at night.

"We told her to ring one of us if she was suspicious of someone knocking and to this day I still can't believe she opened the door to them on that night."

Alan Howes lives next door to Daisy and his daughter was one of the first people to come to her aid after the attack.

He said: "Daisy was always a hardy person and she'd had a hard life but that was all she knew. "She nursed her husband before he died and up until two years ago she would still go out into the garden to chop her own wood.

"I saw her just before Christmas when her grandson brought her to the house to pick up a few things and she just isn't the same person. This whole thing took it out of her. The sentence they got was a complete joke in my opinion. They could have killed her."

Ron Maisey has lived in Addington Road for more than 50 years and said: "I've known Daisy all my life.

"She's just always been in this street, everyone knows her and she's well-loved.

"She's a fantastic woman and the people who did this should have gone to prison for a lot longer. Sadly, this is just typical of what can happen to you in your own home in this day and age."

January 27, 2003 10:30