The recession ruined Linda Ruggles’ business and she has been selling plasma twice a week since to make ends meet. The blood bank couldn’t bail her out from behind bars though, which is where she ended up after she couldn’t pay a $480 fine.
That fine, say cops in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, came about because Linda Ruggles had a messy yard.
Barely getting by in recent years, Ruggles, 53, has been stockpiling scraps to pawn off in order to make her bill payments. In her yard rests a pile of metal that she routinely cashes in to get by. Elsewhere outside her house is a shack of shingles. Paying to have her roof fixed, often a job that comes at a cost of several thousand dollars, has been out of the question.
Ruggles couldn’t fix the roof, however, and she couldn’t pay the fine either. For being unable to do so, she was sentenced to serve 10 days in jail for failing to pay her “clean lot violation.”
TVNL Comment: American "freedom!" Hey troops, thanks for supposedly protecting it!