Desperate to get into prison and help his young grandson, a 60-year-old man from Guadeloupe robbed a local supermarket at gunpoint and then waited patiently to be arrested.
The unusual incident took place at the end of September in Sainte-Rose, a commune in the north of the Guadeloupe archipelago. A former firefighter with no criminal record walked into a supermarket located near the local police station with a balaclava over his mouth and holding a firearm. After demanding all the money in the cash register and helping himself to “a piece of Emmental cheese and a bottle of wine,” the man was arrested as he slowly walked back to his car, as if he wanted to be caught. It turns out that this was his goal exactly, as he wanted to get into prison to help his grandson.
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“He was desperate: he wasn’t interested in money, he just wanted to get into prison to see his grandson and at least go for a walk with him,” Léa Le Chevillier, the man’s Court-appointed lawyer told Agence France Press, adding that he had seen his grandson in the visiting room “with a broken tooth after being molested by his fellow inmates.”
Prosecuted for armed robbery, aggravated assault, and rebellion, the sixty-year-old man with a clean criminal record appeared before the Court and admitted the facts he was accused of. However, “the completely unprecedented profile of the perpetrator” left everyone scratching their heads, including the presiding Judge, who, instead of the typical three to five years of prison time, ruled that the man acted out of desperation and should not pay such a high price for it.
The sixty-year-old man will have to compensate the victims of his robbery, receive psychological treatment, and refrain from visiting the shopping center he robbed. He will also retain his right to visit his grandson, legally, without becoming an inmate.
Interestingly, this is not the first time we’ve written about people committing crimes as a way of getting into prison.
