It was not perhaps the most obvious way of getting a bad back, arthritis and a dodgy foot seen to. But if you're unemployed in North Carolina with no health insurance, there is no obvious way.
So James Verone left his Gastonia home, took a ride to a bank and carried out a robbery. Well, sort of.
James Verone is a 59-year-old resident of Gaston County, North Carolina and suffers from a number of health problems such as slipped discs, arthritis, and an injured foot. He held the job of a Coca-Cola delivery man for 17 years but recently lost it. With the job, he also lost his health insurance.
Being a senior citizen and on the receiving end of many medical problems that creep in with old age, Verone started to face monetary problems. In order to receive medical attention that won't cost him anything, he came up with a plan. He stole $1 from the bank and got himself arrested so that he could get free health care in jail.
Without health insurance, Verone tolerated chronic back aches and a pain in his left foot that made him limp. But when he noticed a lump on his chest, he knew he had to do something.
"The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept," he told the Gaston Gazette. "I kind of hit a brick wall with everything."
Verone said he "exercised all the alternatives" before planning to rob the Gastonia bank, which he chose at random, for a dollar, according to reports. As the day approached, Verone paid his last month's rent, donated his furniture and moved into a Hampton Inn. And on the morning of June 9, before hailing a cab to the bank, he mailed a letter to the Gaston Gazette.
The letter that he sent to the Gaston Gazette said: "When you receive this a bank robbery will have been committed by me for one dollar. I am of sound mind but not so much sound body."
What he did to rob the bank was hand the clerk a note that said: "This is a bank robbery, please only give me one dollar" and claim to have a gun. Then, as he later told the local NBC news station, he calmly sat in the corner of the bank having told the clerk: "I'll be sitting right over there in the chair waiting for the police." The teller who received his perplexing request made a frantic 911 call, and was later taken to Gaston Memorial Hospital for high blood pressure, according to local reports. Verone is said to be sorry for causing her any pain.
When asked if he was afraid while robbing the bank Verone told local reporters "I didn't have any fears. If you don't have your health you don't have anything."
Verone said he hoped his $1 bank robbery would earn him a three-year jail sentence, during which he could undergo surgery on his back and his foot and have a painful lump on his chest diagnosed and treated. After that, the 59-year-old from Gastonia, N.C., would move to Myrtle Beach to collect his social security, he told local reporters.
But the charge Verone faces for the heist, larceny from a person, is unlikely to keep him behind bars for more than 12 months. He is being held in Gaston County Jail, where he has already been seen by several nurses, on a $2,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court. And if his sentence is too short, Verone said he plans to rob again.
For the most part, his plan worked well. Verone has received some medical attention that he needed. However, the surgery that he needs to fix his more serious ailments will take time, and the sentence he'll likely receive will be too short to permit all the operations to be finished.
"I'm sort of a logical person and that was my logic, what I came up with," Verone told reporters. "If it is called manipulation, then out of necessity because I need medical care, then I guess I am manipulating the courts to get medical care."
