Bank Takeover Ends Safely

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

The incident was the most dramatic of three bank robberies across Orange County on Wednesday and was the fifth in two days. FBI officials said that bank robberies in Southern California, which had decreased significantly over the last few years, rose 8% during the first eight months of 2000.

The hostage drama began just after noon, when a man police identified as 30-year-old Hoang Tran of Garden Grove strode into the crowded Bank of America on Magnolia Avenue, shouted at customers to get on the floor and fired a shot from a high-caliber handgun into the air, witnesses said.

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

“He fired one shot. . . . The glass smashed,” recalled 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 in the heart of Little Saigon, taking positions behind parked vehicles and herding bystanders across a vast asphalt lot and away from the building. Inside the bank, Nguyen and others said they listened as the distraught gunman complained in English and Vietnamese that life had forced him to come to the bank. He demanded that the bank’s president wire money to his account to pay off thousands of dollars in student loans, witnesses said.

The gunman told the hostages he was a fired county employee and demanded that $90,000 be transferred to the account of a charity that helps women and children, according to Quang Phung, a 45-year-old La Habra resident inside the bank at the time.

Phung hit his head on a pole when diving for cover and begged the gunman to release him, he said. But the robber at first refused, saying, “I need you,” recounted Phung, who was later treated at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital for a minor wound.

To the surprise of hostages, the would-be robber 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 about a dozen of his hostages, particularly those children in the group, to a waiting van.

“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.

Authorities attempted numerous times to contact the gunman in the bank, but nobody answered the telephones. Eventually, Tran himself 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 of the hostages running with their arms raised high over their heads. Waiting police officers ushered the hostages into police cruisers and sped from the parking lot with tires squealing.

It was just after 2 p.m. when Tran walked from the bank, his hands held high in the air.

Neither local police nor FBI investigators would confirm the gunman’s motive Wednesday, saying they were still interviewing witnesses at the Westminster Police Department. Police also declined to say whether Tran’s backpack actually contained an explosive device, although a bomb removal team used a robot to retrieve the bag.

Authorities evacuated houses and stores around the bank, and traffic along Bolsa Avenue and Magnolia Avenue was diverted. Hordes of local residents and shoppers flocked to the busy intersection to watch the spectacle and cheered as a procession of police SUVs, a slab-sided armored car and firetrucks raced to the scene. One of the many onlookers was a local man who loaded his three children into a shopping cart and trundled them several blocks to the scene. “We heard about it on TV so we wanted to see it live,” he said.

For some of those bank customers who were caught up in the ordeal Wednesday, their discomfort continued long after Tran surrendered.

Thong Phan, 68, of Santa Ana, was in the bank with her 69-year-old husband, Muoi, when the commotion began. Thong Phan said she managed to crawl out of the bank as people fell to the floor, but her husband was trapped inside. When he was released from the bank, police quickly ushered him to the police station.

“My husband hasn’t eaten all morning,” Phan said anxiously. “Why does this have to happen today? I wanted to go to the bank yesterday and the day before.”

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

McWilliams said she could not explain the increase in bank robberies, nor would she comment on how the FBI has responded to it. “I don’t know if there’s really a general answer,” she said. “Different people have different motives.”

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Times correspondent Ana Beatriz Cholo and Times staff writers Brady MacDonald and David Haldane contributed to this report.