Bank Robbery Suspect Can’t Escape Team of Security Guards

A suspected bank robber stumbled on the wrong target--and the wrong three security guards--when he told his cabbie to park in front of a Wells Fargo branch in Hollywood.

He got several hundred dollars from tellers at the Hollywood Boulevard bank, police said. But getting away was another matter.

First, a security guard from the bank jumped in front of the cab and yelled at the driver to stop.

When the suspect bolted from the cab, he was chased by a second guard. So he fled toward Hollywood Community Hospital, apparently hoping to disappear inside it.

Enter yet another guard, this one from the hospital. After watching the chase unfold, he slammed the suspect into a wall with one of the hospital’s heavy side doors.

Borrowing wire from construction workers nearby, the guards then bound the man and held him until police arrived, said Wayne Craig, a spokesman for Western Security Inc., the hospital guard’s employer.

Police said they found the money and a vial of crack cocaine in the man’s shirt.

Arrested in the incident Wednesday afternoon was Richard Sullivan, 31, of San Francisco, who was on parole for bank robbery and wanted in his home city in connection with three other bank heists, Los Angeles police Detective Jim Grayson said.

Kathleen Shilkret, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, said the bank appreciated the daring of the guards, who work for a private security firm. But, she added, “this is not the sort of thing we would encourage, quite simply, because of the danger to the individuals involved.”

“While we appreciate it,” she said, “we worry.”