Surveillance video shows man with towel over face and gun
pointed at bank employees
Police continued to search Monday for a lone gunman who wore a towel around his face and robbed the Bank of America in south Morgan Hill then fled on a scooter Friday afternoon.
One shot was fired inside the bank, police said. A fragment of the bullet hit a woman inside the bank in the leg, but she was not seriously injured. Paramedics responded, but did not transport the victim by ambulance.
The suspect may have fled the scene on a scooter, according to Morgan Hill Police Chief Bruce Cumming. The thief is described as a white male in his 20s, about 5-feet 9 inches to 6-feet tall, with a medium build.
One man was arrested but he was not involved in the 1:30 p.m. robbery, police said. He was uncooperative with officers outside the bank, possibly because he was concerned for the safety of his mother, who was inside the bank at the time of the robbery, police said. He was later released.
The gunman got away with about $3,100.
Officers closed off portions of the parking lot in the Vineyard Town Center for several hours to investigate. Crime scene tape blocked the lot between the McDonald’s restaurant and the bank, and police also blocked off the east side of the bank and the parking area on that side, as well as the most southern entrance to the shopping center from Monterey Road.
FBI agents were notified as is standard procedure for a bank robbery, and customers and bank employees remained on the scene to be interviewed first by Morgan Hill police and then by FBI agents.
The last time a bank was robbed in Morgan Hill was in February of 2006 when the Wells Fargo Bank in downtown was robbed by a man who put his hand under his shirt to simulate a gun and handed the teller a note.
Reports over Gilroy police scanner channels reported that an aqua Ford Contour was associated with the crime. The license plate was 5TM894 and belonged to a car reported lost or stolen out of Gilroy last year. A similarly described car was also associated with a Bank of America robbery in Aptos later this afternoon, according to conversations over the police scanner. However, Morgan Hill police insisted there was no car associated with the incident.
Third local Bank of America hit in two months
Local Bank of Americas have experienced a run of robberies in the past two months. A man robbed a Bank of America on Camino Arroyo in Gilroy Jan. 15 and then robbed a Los Altos Bank of America a week later.
A man caught on tape robbing a Bank of America in Gilroy last week was captured again on video while robbing a Bank of America in Los Altos. Police did not disclose the amount of money taken in either instance.
Images from the Gilroy bank’s security camera show the heavyset, bearded suspect with his right hand in his front jacket pocket for the two minutes he was in the bank beginning about 9:30 a.m. Police believe he could have had a weapon, but he did not brandish one during the incident, according to a GPD press release.
The suspect in the Gilroy robbery appeared to operate alone without a get-away driver, and Detective Stan Devlin said police had received information indicating that the suspect walked out of the bank and through the parking toward Best Buy, where he probably had a car waiting. Devlin added that police do not have the make or model of the suspected vehicle.
The man in the Gilroy robbery never used physical force and, in fact, waited in line for a brief moment before walking to the counter and demanding money from a teller. He provided the teller with his own bag and then left with an undisclosed amount of cash. The man wore a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, sunglasses and a dark coat, according to bank video.
Police have not released a description of the robber in today’s incident.
Also check out: A story about the Los Altos robbery a week later, both complete with pictures of the suspect taken by a security camera.
Sheila Sanchez, Robert Airoldi and Christopher Quirk contributed to this article.
