A jury has sentenced a Waco man convicted of stealing a rack of ribs to 50 years in prison.

Forty-three-year-old Willie Smith Ward was convicted and sentenced on robbery charges Wednesday. The Waco Tribune-Herald reports that Ward's theft of the $35 rack of pork ribs turned into a robbery after he threatened a grocery store employee who tried to stop him in 2011.

The employee testified that Ward told him he had a knife.