Bandits Bungle Bank Robbery; 2 Suspects Held

A pair of armed bank robbers apparently sneaked out the back door of a Bank of America branch in Downey with a couple of bags of money Thursday morning, just as dozens of police, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents surrounded the location and prepared for a lengthy standoff.

But their timely--if temporary--escape was apparently the only thing the two men did right, after evidently gaining access to the bank in the 7800 block of Imperial Highway through its roof sometime during the night.

According to Downey Police Capt. Bob Williams, the robbers, wearing ski masks and armed with a sawed-off shotgun, grabbed two female employees as the women arrived for work at about 7:30 a.m.

‘We Know You Have Money’

“Open the safe, we know you have money in there and you count it in the morning,” Williams said the women were told.

The women said they could not open the safe, but they did open the night deposit vault, which contained several sealed bags deposited during the night.

About this time, a third woman arriving for work saw the night vault open, realized that something was wrong and ran to call police.

As police raced to the scene, Williams said, “one suspect took one of the employees to the back of the bank and told her to open the back door. She did. But when she turned around, he (the robber) was walking away. She said she left right there,” fleeing across a parking lot to safety.

The robber apparently returned to the lobby, suddenly realized that the woman he had escorted to the back was missing, and, with his accomplice, ran to the back of the bank to look for her.

“Right then, the second gal ran out the front,” Williams said.

At that moment, as police began arriving at the front of the bank, the two robbers apparently fled out the back, officials said.

A few minutes later, Downey police spotted a small sedan parked in thea residential neighborhood behind the bank. Beside the car, on the pavement, was a red ski mask and in the trunk was a toy Uzi submachine gun and several genuine shotgun shells. Parole papers, believed to belong to one of the robbers, were found on a seat of the car, and police were dispatched to his home address.

Meanwhile, a Downey patrolman cruising through the neighborhood spotted two men “ducking behind buildings, trying to hide,” Williams said.

One of the men, Charles Lee Hayes, 55, of Bellflower, was arrested in the yard of a home on Daylen Street. The other man fled into a nearby home.

A sheriff’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team surrounded the building and after a two-hour standoff lobbed in tear gas grenades and “flash-bang” shells designed to stun a suspect.

The officers waited another hour and 15 minutes, then rushed the house and moments later emerged with a second, yet unidentified, suspect they said was found hiding in the attic of the home.

The SWAT team recovered a shotgun, bags of cash and bank documents. Both suspects were taken to Downey police headquarters for questioning.

Downey police arrested a third man whose car was seen driving through the neighborhood a few minutes after the robbery. Officers later released the man, saying it did not appear that he was involved in the robbery.

An FBI SWAT team, which had kept the bank surrounded because of the possibility that another robber might be lurking there, finally entered the building at about 2:15 p.m., but agents found no one.