Sad state of affairs. Man robs bank to get medical help.

Biggins

Story from the USA.

Short version:
Man sick, couldn't afford medical help, couldn't get others to aid him.
Enters bank, robs teller of one Dollar, then sits down IN THE BANK and awaits for the cops to arrive.
He hopes to get the treatments he needs to live, in prison.

Long version:

Too young for free health care, and too poor to pay for it himself, James Verone, a former shopkeeper from North Carolina, had begun to despair of ever finding treatment for his various ailments.
Then he had what he regards as his Eureka moment. In his home state there was an organisation that offered free medical attention, a bed and regular meals: a place where he would be kept under constant supervision. The name of this place was prison.

All that was required for a lengthy stay in this heathcare utopia was that he commit a crime. So Mr Verone, 59, set off to rob a bank of $1.
“I’m sort of a logical person and that was my logic,” he told reporters from Gaston County Jail, where he has already enjoyed two check-ups with a prison nurses and will see a doctor on Friday.
Verone’s logic first suggested a foray into criminality earlier this summer.

After a seventeen-year career working for Coca-Cola, he found employment as a truck driver and then as a convenience store clerk, but found it hard to hold down the job.
He walked with a limp, he suffered arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome, and he had two ruptured discs in his back. Then he discovered a strange protrusion in his chest.

“The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept,” he told his local paper, the Gaston Gazette. He tried to file for disability benefits, but qualified only for food stamps.
That was when he concluded that crime might pay, after all, at least in the form of back and foot surgery. He would suffer some injury to his reputation after a lifetime as a law-abiding citizen, but this would be more than outweighed by being able to put weight on both feet again, and by being able to bend down and reach things on low shelves.

He sold his furniture, paid his final month’s rent and moved into a hotel. On June 9 he showered, ironed his shirt, and caught a taxi to downtown Gastonia.
He posted a letter to his local paper. “By the time you read this a bank robbery will have been committed by me,” it said. “I am of sound mind but not so much sound body.”

At the RBC Bank Verone handed a bank clerk a note, warning that he was armed and demanding that she hand over a dollar. Then he immediately surrendered. “I say, ‘I’ll be sitting right over here on the chair, waiting for the police’,” he said.
The bank employee called the police and said that the outlaw could be apprehended “sitting on the sofa as you walk in the front door”. Police found him there, unarmed.

He will appear in court on June 28, where he is hoping to receive a sentence of several years: time to undergo treatment and recover in state-funded accommodation.
His only concern is that he was not charged with robbery but with larceny, which carries a lesser sentence.
Now Verone is considering issuing a warning to the court that if his sentence is too lenient, he may reoffend. If he feels up to it.

The Times (England) Yesterday: http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/8058/20110623100027.jpg

A very sad state of affairs.
That people should have to resort to such ways just to get help.
Bad, just bad.


(Anyone else think he looks like an aged Martin Sheen? "The West Wing" president has fallen far!)

My name is URL

And we think our health system is draconian..

Seachmall

Clever bastard.

Sad situation though.

Balfie

least he is gettin a bed over there.. Over here he would be thrown in a shopping trolly for 5 days an then told he is fine with a box of panadol for his trouble.

previous user

You couldn't pay me to live in America

orourkeda

Makes a change.

In effect, the banks have stolen money from hospitals since they went tits up.

ancapailldorcha

It's a bit tragic when healthcare is a business. Poor folks like this get pushed to the side because he can't afford health insurance.

TheZohanS

He'll sell his story and they'll make a movie out of it yet.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Well, God bless Obama's affordable healtcare reforms. And the mean reason I think helathcare should be available each according to his needs.

Biggins wrote: »

(Anyone else think he looks like an aged Martin Sheen? "The West Wing" president has fallen far!)

I thought Nick Nolte myself.

previous user wrote: »

You couldn't pay me to live in America

You could me, but it would want to be a LOT of money. And health isurance.

orourkeda

orourkeda wrote: »

Makes a change.

In effect, the banks have stolen money from hospitals since they went tits up.

In effect Fianna Fail have ensured money for the banks has gone to the banks Banks are stealing f all.

orourkeda

Where health care is concerned money should never be an issue

dilallio

TheZohan wrote: »

He'll sell his story and they'll make a movie out of it yet.

Brooks was here

mackg

This may not have been the wisest move, bad stuff happens in prision. He could come out a lot worse then he went in.

Hiawassee

i'm thinking that he is gonna get a pass on this, stealing a dollar isnt enough to warrant any real jail time. if wanted to do some real time he needed to get caught with drugs or hurt someone white. most likely the judge will see what he was up to and be an asshole about it and give him some sort of probation and a giant ass fine.

one can only hope this is one of the times that someone can benefit from our backasswards justice and healthcare systems.

mikemac

He's not going to jail

He'll get the one punishment he can't handle, a fine

edit: beaten it it above ^^^^

Seachmall

Hiawassee wrote: »

i'm thinking that he is gonna get a pass on this, stealing a dollar isnt enough to warrant any real jail time.

Bank Robbery is a federal crime with a mandatory prison sentence iirc.