VENTURA : 3 Bank Robbery Suspects Arrested

A wild police chase after three suspected bank robbers ended in an Oxnard residential neighborhood when one suspect was found hiding in a doghouse, another in a woman’s closet and a third in a garage.

The incident began Wednesday morning at the Wells Fargo Bank on South Chestnut Street in downtown Ventura. The bank, a frequent robbery target, was robbed April 1, May 13 and again June 19, said Gary Auer, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Ventura office. Suspects were arrested each time, he said.

Ventura Police Sgt. Roger Nustad described the sequence of events in the latest incident.

At 10:27 a.m., three men, one armed with a 9-millimeter pistol, walked into the bank, announced a robbery and ordered several customers to the floor. Then two of the men leaped over a bank counter and filled a blue cloth bag with several thousand dollars from teller drawers.

The men fled in a van southbound on the Ventura Freeway. The van was seen by Ventura Police Officer Robert Macinnes as he was driving onto the freeway at Victoria Avenue.

Joining in the chase were Oxnard police, robber-sniffing dogs and a Sheriff’s Department helicopter.

Exiting at Vineyard Avenue in Oxnard, the van sped into a residential neighborhood, jumped a curb and crashed into a tree near Geranium Place and Edelweiss Street. The three men left most of the cash in the van in the scramble to escape.

One of the suspects, Robert Johnson, 34, of Los Angeles, was found by Ventura Officer Doug Driver hiding in a doghouse in the yard of a house on Geranium Place, Nustad said. Johnson had a broken leg and surrendered without incident.

William Rogers, 30, of Los Angeles was apprehended in the garage at the same house, Nustad said. And nearby, the third suspect, Earl Young, 21, of Los Angeles, was found hiding under a bed by a woman who had just returned from grocery shopping, Nustad said. Young complained of back injuries.

“The lady yelled and we went into the house and found him in the clothes closet” with the rest of the bank cash on the closet floor, Nustad said.

The three were arrested and booked on suspicion of robbery.