Bank Hostages Freed, Gunman Surrenders

A harried and tearful gunman who said he was desperate to repay student loans held 20 people hostage Wednesday afternoon inside a Westminster bank before surrendering to police, according to witnesses and authorities.

No one was hurt in the incident, which was the most dramatic of three bank robberies in Orange County on Wednesday and the fifth in two days. FBI officials said bank robberies in Southern California, while down significantly over the last few years, rose 8% during the first eight months of 2000.

The hostage drama in the heart of Little Saigon began just after noon, when a man police identified as Hoang Tran, 30, of Garden Grove walked into the crowded Bank of America on Magnolia Avenue, shouted at customers to get on the floor and fired a shot from a handgun into the air, witnesses said.

The gunman, who told customers that his backpack contained a bomb, triggered a stampede of customers who ran and crawled out the bank doors, while another group of almost two dozen more dove for the floor, officials said.

“He fired one shot,” said Huong Nguyen, 22, of Garden Grove, who said she crawled and hid behind a table. “I was really scared because he said he was going to explode the place.”

Heavily armed police quickly surrounded the bank, taking positions behind parked vehicles and herding bystanders away from the building. Inside the bank, Nguyen and others said they listened as the distraught gunman complained in English and Vietnamese that his circumstances in life had forced him to come to the bank. He demanded that the bank’s president wire the loan money to his account, witnesses said.

To the surprise of some hostages, the man paid no interest to the cash and checks that customers had thrown to the ground during the holdup. In fact, the gunman said customers should take care to make sure the money was collected by its rightful owners, witnesses said.

After about 20 minutes, the gunman decided to release a dozen hostages, including the children, to a waiting van. This development heartened Nguyen and others.

“He kept saying he wasn’t going to hurt anyone, and the way he let the kids go I believed he wasn’t going to kill us,” Nguyen said. Nevertheless, Tran’s behavior still troubled her. “The pressure. I thought he’d do something stupid.”

Authorities attempted numerous times to contact the gunman in the bank, but no one answered the telephones. Eventually, Tran placed a tearful call to 911 and began talking to hostage negotiators about his predicament, according to police and witnesses.

Over the next hour, the gunman released the remaining seven or eight customers and bank employees. Many hostages ran out with their arms raised high over their heads, and waiting police officers ushered them into police cruisers and sped them away.

It was just after 2 p.m. when Tran walked from the bank, his hands held high. Charges were to be filed against him at a pending arraignment.

Authorities evacuated houses and stores around the bank, and traffic along Bolsa and Magnolia avenues was diverted. Hordes of neighbors and shoppers flocked to the busy intersection to watch the spectacle.

Officers from Garden Grove and Westminster along with the FBI and Orange County Sheriff’s Department were at the scene. Westminster Police Sgt. Jack R. Davidson said he wasn’t sure what prompted the gunman to take hostages but said the initial 911 call reporting the robbery came from outside the bank.

From Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, said spokeswoman Julie McWilliams, the FBI reported an 8% increase in bank robberies in Orange and Los Angeles counties compared to the same period last year. At the same time, she said, takeover robberies--in which the robbers hold hostages--have increased by 17%.

McWilliams said she could not explain the increase in bank robberies. “I don’t know if there’s really a general answer,” she said.

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Times correspondent Ana Beatriz Cholo and Times staff writers Mai Tran, David Haldane contributed to this story.