Ripple of Kansas

 

Picture: Kansas City

What do you do after you’re locked out of a meeting because you’re late? Or just because you don’t belong there? You go sit in the next space available and rethink about your life, otherwise you can give in to your frustration, go back to your bed and apologize for leaving it frowzy.  You walk to the lift lobby and it’s showery outside – back to the dining area you serve a cup of tea to warm away your blue morning.

In one of the most chaotic WhatsApp groups I am in, there is heated discussion concerning women and the damage they can do you. It’s a WhatsApp group with about three hundred members, with a lady being only one – Joyce. How Joyce keeps up with the men there should be studied on a later date. The information that Joyce has about men can be harmful- she participates in all the shenanigans that men talk about. In a group where there are high end professionals you’re sure that time for shenanigans is well distinct from time for serious talks.

An image popped up in the group. A picture of an old man, who I later learnt was in his 70s. At the top of the image was written in bold ‘man who robbed a bank to get away from wife sentenced to home confinement.’ An interesting headline you bet…

Lawrence John Ripple is his name. He walked into a bank downstreet just a short distance from Police headquarters in Kansas City. With his note of threat well wrapped in his palms and an absent gun at the back of his waist he walked into the bank and booked a ticket. At the teller desk he passed a note that was demanding money. The note also highlighted that he had a gun. The teller handed to him nearly $ 3,000 in cash. He walked to the lobby and waited till the police arrived.

It was later stated that Mr. Ripple had written the note Infront of her wife, telling her that he would rather stay in jail than be at home. Before the robbery he was a citizen who had never been on the wrong side of the law. Just a husband and a stepfather to four children. Reports say that he had suffered mental health that went undiagnosed. 

After the vice president of the bank and majority of the bank workers supported the leniency appeal, Mr. Ripple was sentenced to a house arrest. He was also charged $ 227.27 for the billable hours that the bank employees were sent home and $100 to the crime victims fund. Mr. Ripple's lawyer termed the robbery as a ‘cry for help’

Back in the WhatsApp group Joyce was still trying to prove a point against three hundred men that Mr. Ripple's wife was not to blame whatsoever.