Okay, this might be the first time in history someone robbed a supermarket for family values.
Not from greed, but because of love.
In Guadeloupe, a 60-year-old former firefighter with zero criminal record, calmly walked into a supermarket, pointed a rifle at the cashier, and demanded the money.
Oh, and while he was at it, he grabbed a piece of Emmental cheese and a bottle of wine. Then he walked out slowly, and even waited on the sideline to be arrested.
Turns out, that was his plan all along. The man wasn’t trying to get rich or hurt someone, he was trying to get jailed so he could reunite with his imprisoned grandson, who’d been beaten by other inmates.
His lawyer, Léa Le Chevillier, told,
“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.”
The judge, confused but sympathetic, decided not to crush the old man under the system he was trying to hack. Instead of a long sentence, he got 15 months, therapy, and a ban from visiting that supermarket again, but he can still see his grandson legally this time.
I think there’s a paradox here. It’s one of those rare stories where morality and legality just refuse to sit at the same table.
We can see what he did was legally wrong, no question. Armed robbery, assault, and scaring innocent people for any reason is never okay. But then, if you think, what’s left isn’t malice, it’s love weaponized by desperation.
The man didn’t want money, power, or even freedom. He’s already a good citizen who just wanted to make sure his grandson wasn’t getting beaten in a place that eats young men alive.
It’s irrational, yes. But it’s the kind of irrationality that makes you pause because there’s something painfully human about it. The system wouldn’t let him protect his family, so he found a way around it, even if that meant becoming part of it, and losing himself in it.
Sometimes love stops following logic. It just starts following the heart, and the heart, as history shows us, makes terrible legal counsel.
THE WHY: COMPASSION
3.5/5 on the weirdness scale because it’s both insane and heartbreakingly human. A man so lonely for his grandson that he thought crime was the only way to show up for him.
“Look, most of us want a normal life without any drama, but life in this world is always strange, and uncertain.
I don’t need your email. I don’t want to bug you with a billion notifications. All I ask is this, if you felt something here, if this made you think, laugh, or even shake your head in disbelief, just bookmark ‘Averagebeing.com’ and come back tomorrow.
That’s it. No strings. Just you, me, and this stupid world.”
