Bank Worker Chases Robber on Freeway Before Arrest Made : Crime: Officers seize the Oxnard man in a housing tract. He is believed responsible for 10 holdups in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

Police arrested a man believed responsible for 10 bank holdups this year after a red-dye packet exploded on a robber, and at least one bank employee chased the man onto the Ventura Freeway on Thursday afternoon.

Jose Luis Villareal, 19, of Oxnard is being held at Ventura County Jail on suspicion of bank robbery and misdemeanor warrants.

After a robbery about 1 p.m. at the Wells Fargo Bank at 460 Esplanade Drive in Oxnard, the robber was confronted by at least one bank employee outside the bank. The robber was told to drop the money. When the red-dye packet exploded and made a loud buzzing noise, the man jumped on it in an attempt to silence it, bank workers said.

A bank employee then chased the man on foot for a few blocks through the Financial Plaza Shell Station on Vineyard Avenue and Esplanade Drive, onto the freeway--where he jumped a fence--and into a housing complex, said Gary Auer, who heads the FBI’s Ventura division.

The FBI reported that two tellers were involved in the pursuit, but a bank spokeswoman said only one employee chased the robber and she would not say if it was a teller.

Bank employees are instructed to hand over the money if they are threatened with a weapon and are told not to try to apprehend a robber, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Kathleen Shilkret said.

“It’s dangerous,” Shilkret said. “We don’t want to have our employees put themselves in physical danger.”

Oxnard police unsuccessfully searched the College Park housing tract near the corner of Vineyard Avenue and St. Mary’s Drive for about an hour before four undercover agents took over. The agents staked out the area for about another hour before seeing Villareal about 3 p.m., Lt. Stan Myers said.

Villareal was not wearing the clothes described by bank workers but matched the robber’s description and “there was indication of the dye,” Myers said.

Officials believe he is responsible for robbing eight other banks in the county in the past three weeks, including two in Port Hueneme, one in Thousand Oaks, two in Oxnard, one in Ventura and two in Camarillo. He also reportedly attempted a robbery at a second bank in Thousand Oaks, Auer said.

Oxnard police suspect Villareal in two Los Angeles County bank robberies within the past six weeks, Myers said.

This is the county’s second rash of bank robberies in recent months. In August, officials arrested two men suspected of robbing seven banks and trying to rob two more. The men are awaiting trial in federal court, Auer said.

Yesterday’s bank robbery was the 36th of the year, compared with 59 robberies in Ventura County at this time in 1989, Auer said. In 1987, Auer said, a single robber suspected of 16 Ventura County robberies was convicted of four. In 1988, a man pleaded guilty to four of 14 suspected robberies.