Woman Bank Robber Kills Security Guard : Crime: She flees with two accomplices who take an unknown amount of money.

In an unusual twist on an all-too-frequent crime, a woman bank robber shot and killed a San Pedro bank security guard Wednesday and fled with two male accomplices who had vaulted over the counter and scooped an unknown amount of money from tellers’ cash drawers.

The security guard, identified by police as Juan A. Corona-Garcia, 36, of Los Angeles, was shot in the neck--possibly with his own gun--when he struggled with the bank robber inside the Home Bank branch in the 700 block of South Gaffey Street at 9:20 a.m. He died later at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital.

Shortly after the robbery, a blue van that apparently was used as a getaway car was discovered a few blocks away. Nearby, police found wigs and clothing--including what appeared to be a security guard’s uniform--believed to have been abandoned by the robbers.

Corona-Garcia, who was employed by Intercept Private Security of Los Angeles, had only been assigned to the bank since Monday, when it reopened as a branch of Home Bank after the closure last week of the Bank of San Pedro.

It was the 787th bank robbery so far this year in the seven-county Los Angeles area, described by law enforcement officials as “the bank robbery capital of the world.” FBI spokesman John Hoos said it was the 120th “takeover” bank robbery--in which everyone in the bank is held at gunpoint.

Hoos said that women are involved in only 5% of Los Angeles bank robberies overall, and those almost always are “note jobs” in which the robber demands money from an individual teller.

In recent years, women “note job” bank robbers in the Los Angeles area have included a stout woman--nicknamed “Large Marge” by FBI investigators--who robbed at least six banks in Glendale and the San Gabriel Valley; the so-called “Miss America Bandit,” who robbed at least 10 banks; and a 66-year-old woman who faced misdemeanor weapons charges after brandishing a gun at a San Fernando Valley bank teller and demanding exactly $242--the amount of her Social Security check that she claimed should have been automatically deposited to her account but wasn’t.

But a woman’s participation in a takeover bank robbery is “definitely unusual,” Hoos said. And for a female to shoot someone during a bank robbery, he said, is “very rare.”

The last time it happened in Los Angeles may have been last August, when two people dressed as women nurses shot and wounded an armored car guard outside a bank in the Fairfax district. However, police said, they may have been men disguised as women.

A Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman, Officer Lorie Taylor, said investigators are assuming that the person involved in the Home Bank robbery was in fact a woman and not a disguised man. Police, FBI officials and victim counselors said at least 20 people, mostly employees, were in the bank when the robbery and shooting occurred. The female robber, dressed in a green jumpsuit, shouted that a robbery was under way.

“Someone yelled ‘Get down!’ and everyone hit the floor,” said Carlyn Belsky, a volunteer counselor with the LAPD’s Crisis Response Team who talked to some of the witnesses. “They (bank employees) were all very shaken up by it.”

While the female robber stood near the security guard, Hoos said, two male robbers, at least one of whom may have been wearing a security guard uniform, jumped over the tellers’ counter and started emptying the cash drawers.

Corona-Garcia began struggling with the woman robber and a gun went off, hitting him in the left side of the neck, Hoos said. Hoos said it is believed the gun was Corona-Garcia’s, but police would not confirm that. The robbers then fled.

Ralph Williams, a spokesman at Intercept Private Security, said Corona-Garcia had worked at the security firm for about one year in a variety of assignments.

Bank officials said the branch bank will be closed today.

Times staff writer Ted Johnson contributed to this story.