Give back my wedding and engagement rings, North West widow pleads to burglars

By Q Radio News

A great-grandmother from Derry-Londonderry has been left heartbroken after burglars stole her wedding and engagement rings - just four months after her husband passed away.

The thieves ransacked 72-year-old Marie Ewing's Irish Street home last Friday while she was at work in the canteen of Lisneal College.

They made off with the wedding band, engagement ring and eternity ring that her husband Roy - who lost his battle with cancer in July - had given her.

A ring with her children's birthstones in it, including that of her baby daughter Deborah who died at just 13 days old, was also stolen.

"My daughter had called into my house to drop off a present she had bought me," Mrs Ewing said.

"When she and her partner went into my home they saw that the safe was lying on the kitchen floor and that the drawers in the hall had been opened.

"They went upstairs and found the bedrooms had been ransacked. She phoned me at work and I came straight home. When I got there the police had arrived.

"I looked around and everything was on the floor. They had gone through my wardrobes and threw everything everywhere. The curtains were closed so no one could see them. They even went through my hot press."

Mrs Ewing found that the thieves had taken £53 she was keeping for her grandson in an envelope - and left a pound under her pillow.

After she and her family cleared up the clothes and jewellery that were scattered all over the floors, Mrs Ewing said she made a heartbreaking discovery.

"They had taken my most precious things," she said.

"They took my engagement and eternity rings as well as a wide wedding band that my husband bought me for our 25th wedding anniversary.

"They took a silver cluster ring and a mother's ring my children had bought me for Christmas.

"The engagement, wedding and eternity rings meant so much to me because my husband Roy gave them to me.

"Roy died of cancer in July, just 12 weeks after he was diagnosed and those rings were so very special to me. We were married for 51 years. It's awful, Roy's not here and now they have taken the rings he gave me.

"The mother's ring was very precious because it had all my children's birthstones in it, including my baby daughter Deborah, who died when she was just 13 days old in 1971.

"She had spina bifida, so that ring also meant a lot because of that and that my children bought it for me."

Mrs Ewing said that the burglary has now left her feeling vulnerable in her own home.

She added: "I am afraid. I don't like to tell the children that, but I'm sick to my stomach.

"When I come home I am going in and looking through the house to see if anything has been moved.

"I have lost sleep over this. Every noise I hear I am up.

"I just lost Roy four months ago and it is still very raw.

"Last week I was over in England because my brother died. I didn't need this.

"I have lived in this house my entire life. It was my mother and father's old house and nothing like this has ever happened."

Mrs Ewing said she would like those who took the precious items to give them back to her.

"Those rings have such high sentimental value," she said.

"I wish the people who took them would leave them somewhere, leave them in a church or on my doorstep. I just want them back."