Crime and Punishment

Sentenced bank robber says she did it for child support

March 11th, 2011 by | Permalink

Photo via Northwestern Regional Adult Detention Center

A Virginia woman sentenced to serve six years in prison for a bank robbery in May said she did it to get funds to pay child support her fiance owed so he could be released from jail, according to NVDaily.com.

Crystal M. Lowney committed the robbery at the Kernstown branch of the Bank of Clarke County on May 11. During the robbery, Lowney displayed a toy gun and gave a teller a note demanding money. She then took the cash to the Shenandoah County Courthouse in Woodstock to try to use the money to get her boyfriend released from jail.

At her sentencing on Thursday in Frederick County Circuit Court, Lowney testified that she didn’t think of the consequences when she committed the crime.

“I really didn’t think,” Lowney said on Thursday. “It just happened. I was really stressed out and I was trying to get him home.”

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Andrew Robbins questioned Lowney’s statement that the robbery “just happened”. Robbins noted that Lowney had at least spent the time to write the note and take the gun from her child’s toys.

Lowney was sentenced to 10 years for the robbery as well as a mandatory three-year term for the firearm offense. The judge suspended seven years of the robbery sentence and ordered the terms be served consecutively, creating the resulting six year sentence. Lowney will serve five years of supervised probation upon her release.

The 21-year-old is a mother of two, ages 1 and 3. Lowney testified she has made arrangements for someone to take care of her children but they are not aware of why she is in jail.

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  • Shocked

    I am not shocked that she committed the robbery, but at the stiff sentence.

    Good men are under tremendous pressure by the courts to produce money they can not earn at this time of unemployment, and the courts will not lower their child support payments.

    This woman was wrong, but under the pressure of a court requiring payment or keep her man in jail, and the requirement to also be civil in a civil society.

    The court can not continue to put people’s backs against the wall to perform in impossible ways.

    I think of her no worse than a child who steals a loaf of bread to feed his sick mom and alcoholic father….who gets off for trying to do what is right but being unduly pressured by the circumstances around him.

    The court is the alcoholic father and the sick mom is the prosecutor who went after the DAD to pay support he COULD NOT PAY.

    i wish i was on her jury, i would have sent her on her way and remanded the child support unit instead

 
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