Doctor Freed After Arrest Outside S

A 56-year-old Corona del Mar doctor arrested on suspicion of attempted armed robbery of a savings and loan firm was released from jail on his own recognizance late Tuesday to undergo psychiatric examination at a hospital, authorities said.

Dr. Jerome Jablon, a general practitioner with a private practice, was burdened by “an increasing series of horrendous stresses” and a “personal crisis” in the days before his arrest, said his attorney, Jennifer Keller.

“He never intended to rob any bank,” Keller said Wednesday. “I think what we’re looking at is someone who didn’t know how to ask for help.”

Jablon, a staff member of Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, was carrying a skeleton face mask and a .38-caliber revolver when he was arrested about 10 a.m. Tuesday outside a Newport Beach savings and loan branch, police said.

The divorced father, who lives in South Laguna, was booked into the City Jail on suspicion of attempted armed robbery and held on $50,000 bail until a judge ordered his release Tuesday night.

Case Referred

A Newport Beach police spokesman said Wednesday that Jablon’s case had been referred to the district attorney’s office.

Police said an unidentified woman jogging by the Beverly Hills Savings and Loan branch noticed a man tugging on a skeleton mask in a parking lot behind the building. She told an employee, who saw the man wearing the mask as she locked the back door of the building. The employee and others called police.

An officer arrested Jablon, who was carrying a bank bag and the mask in his hands, in front of the savings and loan, police said. Jablon, who never entered the building, was wearing a jogging outfit beneath a three-piece suit, Police Officer Tom Little said.

“We haven’t learned what would cause a supposedly successful doctor to try to rob a bank,” Police Detective Bob Worthen said Wednesday. “ . . . There would seem to be some money problem somewhere.”

Keller said Jablon recently went through a “series of horrendous stresses, personal crisis,” including a recent suicide attempt by a patient and a separation from his girlfriend the night before his arrest .

Keller said that Jablon was not a rich man, that he lived modestly and that he had no “acute (financial) crisis that I know of.” She said Jablon’s behavior was more likely a plea for help.