There is a sad story coming out of Texas this morning about an old man that committed suicide after being told to get out of his house on land belonging to the Arsenal majority shareholder Stan Kroenke. It is being reported that Kroenke bought some real estate in Texas totalling around 520,000 acres for a price in excess of half a billion dollars.
On this massive piece of land there are ‘several houses’ around a lake that were being rented to mostly old poor people, but they have all received ‘notices to quit’ and were told to move out by the billionaire owner. It was one of these, Rick Ellis, with no money and nowhere to go, who decided to take his life.
His wife Annette spoke to a St Louis TV station. “The very first line of his suicide note was ‘Stan stole my home,'” she said. “[Stan] is an evil, evil man. My husband was worth more than all of your money, Stan. The love he gave me. The life we lived. We worked together, we were best friends… we were never apart.”
“[Stan] knew none of us had the money to fight him in court, he knew, and you know what? He didn’t give a dang care in the world and that’s really the sad part about this, that there’s a human being that just doesn’t care,”
One of Ellis’ neighbors, Rick Smith, said he was waiting for something like this to occur. “I did expect something like this to happen,” Smith told KFDX-TV. “And I do believe this is not the last tragic news we’re going to hear, because there are elderly, disabled people out there that have no where to go and no money to do anything with and are going to turn to that option.”
“It’s going to be very tough for her,” Smith said of Annette. “He didn’t have any insurance, she doesn’t have the money for burial expenses. She doesn’t have the money to move. She doesn’t have the money to do anything. She’s just at an impasse where she doesn’t know what she’s going to do from day to day.”
Well you have to feel sorry for these`people. If they are elderly and infirm surely Stan could have them stay there for however longer a life they had in front of them. It’s not like they are going to get in the way with another 520,000 acres (bigger than New York City and Los Angeles put together!) to play around with?
It certainly doesn’t show the Arsenal boss as a very caring, sharing person, but maybe this publicity will make him change his mind on carrying on with evicting everone else?