It doesn’t seem fair, does it? To rape and pillage your whole life and then to steal salvation minutes before you take your last breath. But remember, this is St. Luke. Luke is the only evangelist to tell us this story, and Luke wants to tell us that Jesus dies just like he lived.
It’s just one final instance of St. Luke hammering home his insistent point—that Jesus always cared for the least, the last, the lost, the lame, the leper, and the loser.