A brutal attack on a defenceless pensioner in his own home is being treated as attempted murder.
Harry Reekie, 65, is in a serious condition in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary after suffering multiple stab wounds.
The attack happened at his property in Lothian Street in Bathgate, West Lothian, at about 3.20am on Tuesday.
Police Scotland Detective Inspector Martin MacLean, said: "This was a cowardly, brutal attack on a defenceless, elderly man in his own home in the middle of the night.
"He was stabbed repeatedly and sustained life-threatening injuries.
"My team and I are keeping an open mind on the motive for this attack and whilst items of property would appear to have been stolen, this is an attempted murder investigation."
He urged anyone with information to come forward.
He added: "In particular we are interested in speaking to or identifying two men who may have been seen together in the area, both white, about 5ft 10ins, aged 20 years to 40, one wearing a blue hoody, the other a grey hoody, both possibly wearing jogging bottoms."
Chief Inspector Paul Cameron, who is local area commander for West Lothian, said: "I would like to reassure the community that we are doing everything possible to identify the persons responsible.
"I have in place experts from across Police Scotland who are working tirelessly on this incident for our community," he added.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article