Suspect Dies in Gun Battle at Bank With Brinks Guard : Crime: The dead man’s accomplice escapes, authorities say. It is the third fatal armored car robbery this summer.

A robbery suspect disguised in a wig was shot and killed Thursday during a fierce gun battle between his accomplice and a Brinks guard inside an Inglewood bank, police said.

No one else was injured during the 9:30 a.m. holdup, the third robbery or attempted robbery of a Brinks guard this summer resulting in a fatality. The robbery occurred as the Brinks guard was delivering $3,000 in coins to the First Interstate Bank branch at 11305 Crenshaw Blvd., Inglewood police said.

No money was taken, and the robber who exchanged fire with the guard fled out a back door, still firing as he went down an alley.

A semiautomatic handgun was found near the victim’s body, said Police Sgt. Larry Kirkley, but it was not clear whether it had been fired.

“This is really a strange one,” Kirkley said. “No [witness] accounts at the bank have [the victim] doing anything that makes him a suspect. We’re suspicious because of the way he was dressed. He was wearing a wig . . . or a toupee. He was wearing a uniform with other clothes underneath.”

Police declined to identify the victim pending notification of his relatives. They were studying videotapes and still photographs from bank cameras to determine the identity of the escaped suspect and the role of the victim in the robbery. Police said they were unsure whether the bullet that felled the suspect was fired by the man’s accomplice or by the Brinks guard.

About 12 employees and eight customers were in the bank when the holdup occurred, Kirkley said.

A worker at the Purrfect Auto Service next door to the bank said he heard two or three shots and looked over to see one Brinks guard, still outside the bank, draw his gun.

“I saw him pointing the gun,” said the man, who asked not to be identified. “He was backing up . . . and then lock himself in the back of the Brinks truck.”

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Thursday’s holdup was the third fatal robbery involving Brinks guards since June. In the most recent incident last week, a suspect was shot to death and a guard wounded during a holdup attempt at a Bank of America branch in Sylmar. And in June, Brinks guard Herman Cook was fatally shot without warning by high-powered rifle bullets outside a Bank of America branch in Winnetka. His partner was wounded. The robbers got away with an undetermined amount of money.

“We’re concerned about the increase in armored car robberies,” FBI spokesman John Hoos said. “And we’re concerned with the violence we’re seeing with armored car robberies.”

Unlike bank robbers, armored car bandits almost always work in groups of two, three or more, Hoos said, and they go in knowing that the guards, unlike bank tellers, will be armed. Both factors, he said, make such robberies more likely to end in violence.