Ex-O.C. robber dead after Minn. heist

David Dean Dahlen, whose attempt to hold up an Orange County bank in 1984 included kidnapping, hostage-taking and a 6 1/2 hour standoff with authorities, apparently took his own life after robbing a bank in a Minneapolis suburb Friday, police said.

Dahlen, 47, used a handgun to rob the bank in Plymouth, Minn., about 12:30 Friday afternoon and fled on foot through a residential neighborhood, according to Plymouth Police Sgt. Chris Kuklok.

Dahlen attempted to start a van parked on a neighborhood street but abandoned it and broke into the home of a resident who had just returned home for lunch, Kuklok said.

The woman ran from the house and alerted police, who were already searching the area.

Police SWAT teams and FBI agents surrounded the house and attempted to communicate with Dahlen via his cellphone, the telephone in the residence and a public address system, Kuklok said, but he never responded.

After about an hour, police heard “muffled pops” from the house. Authorities later entered the house and found Dahlen in an upstairs bathroom, dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

An undisclosed sum of money was found at his side, Kuklok said.

Dahlen was 24 when he committed a string of four bank robberies in the Southland. The La Habra resident was awaiting sentencing for those crimes on Oct. 13, 1984, when he abducted the manager of an Irvine bank from her home, bound and gagged her husband and forced the woman at gunpoint to drive to the bank.

There, Dahlen held the manager and three employees hostage in an hours-long standoff with authorities in what was a bungled attempt, he told authorities, to repay his mother money she had put up for his bail.

No one was harmed during the Irvine ordeal, police said. At that time, Dahlen twice tried to shoot himself but his gun apparently jammed.

Dahlen was sentenced in 1984 to 100 years in federal prison but was released in 1997.

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julie.cart@latimes.com