A 60-year-old man robs a supermarket to join his…

Eager to get into prison and help his nephew in there, a 60-year-old man from Guadeloupe, an overseas region of France, robbed a local supermarket at gunpoint and then waited patiently to be arrested by police, Oddity Central reported.

The unusual accident occurred at the end of September in Sainte-Rose, a municipality in the north of the Guadeloupe archipelago.

The man, a former firefighter with no criminal record, entered a supermarket located near the police station with a balaclava over his mouth and holding a weapon.

After demanding all the money from the till and helping himself to “a piece of Emmental 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 exactly his goal, as he wanted to enter prison to reach his nephew.

“He was desperate: he wasn’t interested in money, he just wanted to get into prison to join his nephew and at least spend some time with him,” Léa Le Chevillier, the man’s court-appointed lawyer, told Agence France Press (AFP), adding that during his recent visit, he saw his nephew 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 appeared before the court admitting the facts of which he was accused.

However, “the completely new profile of the perpetrator” left everyone perplexed, including the trial judge, who, instead of the typical three to five years of prison, ruled that the man acted out of desperation and should not pay such a high price for it.

The judge ordered him to compensate the victims of his robbery, to receive psychological treatment and to refrain from visiting the shopping center he robbed. He will also retain the right to legally visit his grandson, without becoming an inmate in prison.

Related