PORT HUENEME : 4th County Bank in 3 Days Is Robbed

Another Ventura County bank was robbed Thursday, marking the fourth heist in three days.

It was unknown whether the robbery at the Bank of America branch in Port Hueneme, at 755 W. Channel Islands Blvd., was related to the earlier robberies. No one was injured in the Thursday holdup.

The theft occurred, an FBI spokesman said, at about 3:55 p.m. when a tall, unshaven, white man approached a teller and whispered, “I have a gun. Don’t give me the bait.” The suspect then handed the teller a note which began, “This is a bank robbery . . ., “ the spokesman said.

(When the same bank was robbed in August, a small ink device called a “bait”--which explodes to stain the money--was turned over to the thief.)

The suspect was described as very tan, wearing a dark green olive sweat shirt and dark jeans, about 5-foot-10, and weighing about 150 pounds.

After the teller gave him an undisclosed amount of money, he left through the front door and fled in a car driven by a another man described as a Latino in his 20s, authorities said. The car was an older-model beige compact, according to Chris Graham, a Port Hueneme police sergeant.

The robbery, which generally went unnoticed by the bank’s customers, was the third this year in Port Hueneme. Two banks were hit in 1994, Graham said.

Two other banks were robbed Tuesday, including a Bank of America branch at 455 S. A St. in Oxnard and a Home Savings branch at 3310 Telegraph Road in Ventura. A third bank, a Bank of America at 1855 N. Oxnard Blvd. in Oxnard, was robbed Wednesday.

Bank robberies in Ventura County--29 so far this year--are up compared to the number committed in four of the past five years.