Suspect in String of Bank Robberies Arrested by FBI
An FBI special weapons team flushed a heavily armed man from an Oxnard motel room early Thursday morning and arrested him on suspicion of robbing a dozen banks from Orange County to San Francisco.
The suspect, Jaime Enrique Wheelock, 60, of Los Angeles, had been the target of an 18-month manhunt as he allegedly went on a robbery rampage.
“We had a tip he was in the Oxnard area” and this information was relayed to Oxnard police, said Mark Llewellyn, a Los Angeles-based FBI special agent in charge of SWAT operations.
At 5:40 a.m. Thursday, 10 members of the FBI’s SWAT team and four other agents, plus a handful of Oxnard police officers, were in place at the motel, Llewellyn said.
At 5:45 a.m., he said, an FBI agent telephoned Wheelock and ordered him outside.
“Damn, you guys are good,” Wheelock told agents as he walked out of his room and allowed himself to be arrested, Llewellyn said.
Inside, FBI agents found two shotguns and a .45-caliber automatic handgun, he said.
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