BREA : Officer Shoots Bank Robbery Suspect

After a short car chase Friday through lunchtime traffic, a Brea police detective shot and wounded one of two Ontario men suspected of robbing a savings and loan on Imperial Highway near State College Boulevard, police said.

Roberto Carrillo, 31, was shot once in the arm about 1 p.m. and reported in stable condition at Brea Community Hospital, Lt. Jim Winder said. He and Edward Bonilla Hernandez, 35, were arrested on suspicion of bank robbery, Winder said.

Police had responded to an armed robbery call from the Southwest Savings & Loan Assn. in a shopping center across from Brea Mall, Winder said.

Witnesses in the shopping center said two men left the bank surrounded by a cloud of red smoke, apparently from an exploding pack of dye that had been placed in a bag of money taken in the robbery. The men drove east through the parking lot to the center’s exit on Randolph Avenue.

The driver of the car held a brown satchel, still puffing with red smoke, outside his open car window, said Russ Russikoff, manager of Coast Footwear in the shopping center.

At that point, the detective, answering the alarm in an unmarked car, turned onto Randolph, Russikoff said.

The suspects “had to make a dead halt because traffic was backed up at the light,” he said. The driver “pointed his hand out the window, and that’s when the cop shot him.”

The Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating.