The wife of a Bronx homeowner who allegedly killed a man he thought was breaking into their house, seemed more worried about her art collection than the deadly confrontation.
“Everybody has to deal with their own choices,” Deborah George told The Post as she emerged from her house Saturday to comment on the arrest of her husband, Troy, 54. “A decision was made that he has to live with for the rest of his life.”
Troy George was charged with murder for the Thursday night attack on the presumed thief, identified as 29-year-old Harold Bates, cops said.
“They don’t understand I have a multimillion-dollar art collection in my home and now I have to come up with the money … I have to go down and get my husband out of there,” Deborah George claimed.
Her spouse was ordered held on $100,000 bail Friday night at his arraignment.
Deborah George said it was “around 11 or 12 (midnight)” and her husband was asleep. “My husband is still in shock,” she said, adding the couple was laying in bed after having “a nice evening.”
She told police she heard someone prowling around their property on East 223rd Street near Bronxwood Avenue in Wakefield.
“I went downstairs first,” she told The Post.
When she went to check, Deborah George claimed she saw a man in the backyard and yelled for him to leave. When the man walked toward the front yard, the woman called 911.
Moments later, her husband went outside and confronted Bates, who fled, police said.
Troy George grabbed a long metal pipe and chased Bates up the block before knocking him out with a blow to the head, police said. Bates, a Mount Vernon resident, died at Montifiore Medical Center.
The dead man’s mother, Linda Bates said, “My son would never rob no one, he had a job. The guy who did this is lying.”
