A Stolen Glance Nets Bank Robbery Suspect
While driving around downtown San Diego on Friday morning, Detective Graig Walton spotted a familiar face.
“Son of a gun, that’s the guy right there,” the detective said to himself when he spotted the small man picking through a trash can on 10th Avenue at Market Street. Walton circled the block to take another look.
The man was wanted in connection with two recent bank holdups in San Diego, and Walton said he remembered the face from a pair of photographs taken by bank surveillance cameras. “He even had the same shoes on.”
Walton said he had been working on another case. “He was just a fluke. He was the last thing on my mind.”
Duane M. Johnson was arrested without incident and booked on charges stemming from a March 30 robbery at a Security Pacific Bank branch and an April 4 holdup of a Bank of San Diego branch, police spokesman Bill Robinson said. Johnson allegedly made off with less than $200 total in the two robberies.
Johnson, who moved to San Diego from Detroit less than a month ago and was described by police as unemployed, was being held at the County Jail downtown on $10,000 bail, a jail spokeswoman said.
Walton, who has been a robbery detective for seven years, said spotting crime suspects on the streets is “not all that uncommon” among detectives.
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