Bank calls police after man tries to 'pay with blood'

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. — A Poplar Bluff man apparently upset over a collection notice is accused of causing a disturbance inside a local bank Monday morning when he began cutting himself in an attempt to “pay with blood.”

After receiving a collection letter, the 25-year-old went to First Midwest Bank on North Westwood Boulevard to “talk to the loan officer and apparently didn’t get the reply he liked,” said Poplar Bluff Police deputy chief Donnie Trout.

“A little bit later, he showed up asking for the same loan officer,” but she was out to lunch.

The man, Trout said, then rolled up his shirt sleeves, began cutting his left arm and said: “the only way he could pay was with his blood.”

“ ... He did try to smear the blood on that loan officer’s desk,” Trout said.

The police department was contacted about 11:20 a.m., and before the officers’ arrival, “bank employees had talked him into laying the knife down,” Trout said.

Officers detained the man, who was released to emergency-medical-services personnel and he was admitted into the hospital for an apparent mental evaluation, Trout said.

Based on the photographs of the man’s injuries, Trout said, they appeared to be “very superficial” and probably would not need stitches.

“I can see six horizontal cuts” on the man’s left arm, Trout said.

The knife was basically a “kitchen knife, like a steak knife,” Trout said.

The man, whose name was withheld, was not arrested, and officers are submitting a probable-cause affidavit to the prosecuting attorney’s office seeking charges of disturbing the peace and unlawful use of a weapon.

“No one at the bank was injured, and he wasn’t trying to rob the bank by no means,” Trout said. “He was upset because he couldn’t pay his bill; he was going to pay with blood.”

Pertinent address:

Poplar Bluff, Mo.