Five Arrested in Series of ATM Thefts : Crime: But police shoot and wound would-be customer who was mistaken for a robber when he stumbled into a stakeout.

Five suspects in a string of ATM armed robberies that netted more than $200,000, were captured in a stakeout by police from four South Bay cities, authorities said Thursday.

But a bank customer who stumbled into the stakeout in El Segundo was shot when police mistook him for a robber.

Undercover police from El Segundo, Torrance and Downey, backed by a Redondo Beach special weapons team, surrounded an automated teller machine at an El Segundo branch of the Bank of America Wednesday night. The police were part of a task force formed to investigate a series of robberies in which the bandits jammed ATMs then forced repair crews to empty the machines of cash.

At the El Segundo bank, the surveillance team watched as the suspects disabled an ATM and waited for a repair crew, authorities said. As they waited, a customer drove up to the teller to withdraw money.

The customer, spotting SWAT team members armed and dressed in fatigues, apparently believed he was going to be robbed, investigators for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. The man panicked and began backing away quickly, investigators said.

Police opened fire. The man, identified as Bernie Dendy, 41, was slightly wounded by a bullet that grazed his head. He was treated at a hospital and released; two women passengers in his car were not hurt, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

It was not clear which city’s police department was responsible for the shooting.

In the confusion over the shooting, police moved in to arrest the alleged robbers. Five suspects--two men and three women--were being held without bail in an El Segundo jail and will be arraigned in federal court on Monday, El Segundo Lt. Mike Lunsford said.

Police believe the group is responsible for at least eight ATM robberies carried out in the last six months in the South Bay. By forcing repair crews to empty the ATM vaults, the robbers have made off with more than $200,000, police say.

The group is not suspected of robbing bank customers arriving at ATMs to make withdrawals, a crime that has received a great deal of publicity in recent months after several victims were killed.

“They had a grander game plan than just that,” Lunsford said, referring to the amount of money the group was able to steal. “It was an organized effort. These people knew what they were doing.”

Lunsford said detectives from the joint task force had spotted the suspects staking out the El Segundo bank earlier in the week and planned Wednesday’s stakeout.

Lunsford identified the suspects as Tony E. Magee, 24; Eric R. Burns, 21; Trina D. Harper, 21; Norma L. Williams, 41, all of Compton, and Evelyn Anderson, 57, of Rancho Palos Verdes.