Officer Briefly Taken Hostage in Bank Holdup

A La Mesa police officer was briefly taken hostage Saturday during a tense parking lot standoff after she and a second officer surprised two armed suspects who had just robbed a suburban bank of $60,000, authorities said.

The two men, who police said broke into the Wells Fargo Bank on Lake Murray Drive and were awaiting employees who arrived Saturday morning, eventually escaped after disarming the veteran police officer of her service revolver and baton during a scuffle in which several shots were fired.

As a second officer looked on from under cover, his pistol drawn, the two suspects dragged Officer Kerry Johniken into a far corner of the bank parking lot, where they escaped by crawling underneath a chain-link fence.

Officer Johniken was treated at the Sharp Rees-Stealy Urgent Care center for a bruised lip after she was apparently punched in the face during the brief struggle, La Mesa police said. The second officer, identified as Walter Stallings, was not injured.

The two bank robbery suspects escaped in a late model white Ford Escort and were last seen driving off into a housing development near the bank.

Officers in the normally placid suburb east of San Diego on Saturday described the bank robbery as an unlikely event.

“This is not at all your usual bank robbery,” said La Mesa Lt. Carl Wirtz. “These two guys apparently break into the bank before hours, surprising the employees as they show up for work. After roughing them up, they break out of the bank and escape the scene by using a police officer as a human shield.

“I haven’t seen a robbery like this in a long time. In fact, I’ve never seen anything like this. This was serious stuff.”

Wirtz said that psychological counseling was being offered to both officers, who Wirtz said were shaken up by the encounter. He said both officers were veteran police department employees, but would not specify the number of years they had served in the department.

“This, by far, is one of the most frightening situations an officer can come into,” he said. “One officer is in a fight for her life, it seems, and the other one is observing as the thieves make off with the first officer as their shield.

“It’s just a traumatic, nerve-racking, stressful situation for everyone involved.”

Authorities said the drama began to unfold about 9 a.m. when officers Johniken and Stallings, driving separate patrol cars, responded to a call of a bank robbery in progress at the Wells Fargo Bank in the 5500 block of Lake Murray Boulevard, about three blocks north of Interstate 8.

“When they got there, they were both able to look through the windows and confirm that there indeed was a bank robbery in progress,” Wirtz said.

Both men, authorities said, were armed with semi-automatic pistols and had their lower faces covered with tape and sweat-shirt hoods pulled low over their eyes so that they were virtually indistinguishable.

Johniken, described as in her early 30s and the second of the officers to arrive on the scene, took position behind her patrol car and watched as a Hispanic male dressed in a gray sweat shirt walked out of the bank and tried to start a white late-model Subaru that police later said belonged to a store employee.

“At gunpoint, Officer Johniken ordered the suspect to freeze,” Wirtz said. “Moments later, a second suspect leaving the bank tackled her from behind. She was blindsided.”

He did not say how far away the officer was standing from the suspect when she issued the command or why Officer Stallings did not alert her to the approach of the second man, who was dressed in brown clothing and blue jeans.

“All this is still under investigation,” Wirtz said.

During the ensuing struggle, several shots were fired from Johniken’s service revolver, a 9-mm semiautomatic pistol, but no one was hit, officers said. “Officer Johniken was struck in the head either by a fist or a blunt object,” Wirtz said.

Witnesses said that Johniken, a stocky woman who wore her curly hair in a ponytail, threw one of the men over her shoulder during the brief struggle.

After disarming the female officer of her revolver and police baton, the men backed away toward a far-flung fence, keeping Johniken--whose face was then bloodied--between themselves and Stallings, who had taken position near his patrol car.

“Officer Johniken escaped as the two men crawled underneath the fence and ran through an adjacent field to their getaway car,” Wirtz said. “It was then that Officer Stallings fired several more shots.”

Neither of the suspects were believed to have been struck as they fled in the getaway car. In all, nine shots were fired by officers during the incident, authorities said.

Wirtz said Saturday that officers are relieved that both their colleagues escaped without harm.

“Anytime you’re dealing with an armed suspect in an armed robbery, you have a potential for serious injury,” he said. “We’re all just pleased that no one was hurt.”

Throughout the afternoon Saturday, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed bank employees, who would not disclose how much money was taken.

Bank manager David Toneck, reached Saturday, said that three employees were inside the bank before business hours when the pair sprang the holdup.

He said the robbers’ method of entry was still under investigation.

“There’s a lot of FBI officers around here right now,” he said. “And, as of yet, they don’t know that.”

Jack Kelly, bank robbery coordinator for the FBI, said late Saturday that he did not believe that the intruders entered the bank before closing time Friday night and then remained until Saturday morning.

He said the men accosted each of the employees--two women and one man--as they entered the bank shortly before 9 a.m. “Basically, they accosted them as they walked in and forced them to take them where the larger amounts of money were,” Kelly said.

“They grabbed them and put them against the wall. They threw one to the ground. They told them to be quiet and not to look at them. The employees were shook up, which is easy to understand if someone puts a gun to your head. These men were very dominant, very authoritative.

“The employees were traumatized, but otherwise, they weren’t hurt.”

Authorities said the men stuffed the cash into a plastic garbage bag before fleeing.

Both men were described as being in their 20s and about 5-foot-9. One had a slender build and weighed about 140 pounds; the other was slightly heavier. Because of the masks, police said, it was not clear whether the second suspect was black or also Hispanic.

On Saturday, more than a dozen officers from several cities cordoned off the bank parking lot, turning away would-be customers who showed up to use the outdoor teller machines.

“There were people’s cars lined up all over the road, (they were) blocking the bike lanes, asking questions,” said one Wells Fargo customer.

“Lucky for me, I know where some other branches are.”