BP #1: Florida Deputy Tried to Kill Elderly Woman, Frame it as Suicide

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/24/us/florida-arrest-elderly/index.html

This news article was about a Florida Deputy that allegedly tried to kill an elderly woman and then attempted to frame it all as suicide. The ex-deputy initially went to the woman’s house back in October of 2016 due to a call for service and ended up becoming friend’s with the woman and continued to visit her at her home over the next couple months. The woman had then asked the deputy to watch her dog for when she was in the hospital, and had gave him a $1,000 check in case anything were to happen to the dog that required medical assistance. The deputy then deposited the check into his personal bank account, as well as gave the dog away on craigslist, and that is where the investigation began.

After a couple months police executives had found a letter with the deputies name on it with four different checks written out to him from the elderly woman totaling up to $65,000. Police had found his fingerprints on the checks. The deputy, a few days after the police had found that out, went to the woman’s home, forced prescription medication down her throat and then left her car running with the door to the garage open causing carbon monoxide to fill the home, in an attempt to frame the scene as a suicide attempt.

What amazes me is that this was a police officer, who had served for 18 years on the line, had gone all this way and attempted all these actions just to try and get a large amount of money. As we have discussed this week in class, wealth is instrumentally valuable, not intrinsically valuable. Wealth is a source and a tool towards happiness, and if the deputy was hoping to receive this money to help take care of personal financial issues that would later lead to a “happier life” then this was clearly not the most effective or morally acceptable way to obtain that. Thankfully the woman had survived all of the abuse, but as for the deputy, he will now live the rest of his life having to deal with the result of his poor choices and will have a much harder time trying to find personal happiness, if he even has that capability anymore. It is just sad to hear and read about such a thing, and to know that there are people out there that are as desperate as he was to try and take care of personal and financial issues.