SWAT Team Rescues 4 Women After Botched Bank Holdup : Crime: Employees apparently hid in a vault for five hours after robbery attempt in Long Beach.

Masked police officers with automatic weapons stormed Long Beach Bank late Wednesday afternoon and rescued four women who had been hiding in a bank vault for nearly five hours since an attempted holdup.

The Long Beach Police Department’s special weapons and tactics team burst into the bank about 4:45 p.m. Moments later, they emerged with four women, who were taken immediately to an FBI command post for debriefing.

Other SWAT members were searching the two-story bank at 1725 Ximeno Ave. for three suspects thought to be in the building.

The incident began shortly after noon. Within half an hour, a man who had been in the safe deposit box area walked out of the bank unmolested and apparently unaware anything unusual was occurring. Police intercepted him and questioned him briefly, but he reportedly told them he knew nothing about the holdup attempt.

Witness Bob Richards came upon the scene a few minutes after the drama began.

“I talked to the (bank) manager, Steve, and one of his employees, who I know very well,” he said.

“They were just stepping out of the bank for a couple of minutes to retrieve something from Steve’s car, (when they) noticed some suspicious characters in there. . . . There happened to be a police officer on a motorcycle nearby, and they summoned him down. And then they looked back into the bank and saw these (three) suspects jump over the counter.”

Richards said he was told that four women employees fled to the safety of a vault and locked it when they realized what was occurring.

He said the bank manager, who talked to the women by telephone, “calmed them down.”

A white, subcompact car parked beside a drive-up window on the side of the bank was left unattended throughout the ordeal, with the trunk open.

Police pulled a chain across one end of the driveway where the car was parked and rolled a trash bin across the other end. But it was not immediately clear whether the car was connected to the bandits.

A police spokeswoman confirmed that the bank was held up in November by a group of men resembling those thought to have been involved in Wednesday’s attempt.

But authorities said it was impossible to know whether the two groups were the same.