(Image: Tim Durkan via Twitter)
Police rushed to the Wells Fargo on Broadway near Republican Friday morning after a reported bank robbery attempt just after 11:15 AM. A suspect described as a white male, wearing a white baseball cap and with a web tattoo was seen fleeing the bank and heading north on Broadway.
A suspect was taken into custody a short time after the initial report. Police spotted the suspect on foot on Melrose near E Mercer just above I-5, a half-mile from the Broadway Market bank. Witnesses from the bank confirmed that police had the correct man in custody.
The suspect in the Broadway hold-up matched the description of a robbery suspect in a University District bank robbery earlier Friday morning. In that incident, a man reportedly armed with two knives robbed the bank and fled the area. One 911 caller reported possibly spotting the suspect getting off the 49 bus on 10th Ave E following the University District hold-up.
Last week, police shot and killed a suspect who fled and crashed his vehicle following a Madison Park bank robbery.
UPDATE: Here is the preliminary SPD report on the incident:
Seattle police arrested a bank robber on Capitol Hill Friday morning minutes after he robbed a bank on Broadway, and several hours after police believe he held up a second bank in the University District.
Around 9 AM, police received a report that a man armed with two large knives had walked into a bank in the 4100 block of University Way NE and demanded cash. Witnesses said the man stuffed the money in his shirt and then casually walked out of the bank and down the street.
Police searched the neighborhood, but weren’t able to find the man—described as a white male in his late 20s, about 6’0 tall, with a facial tattoo.
A Metro driver working in the area told officers he believed the suspect may have boarded a bus and left the neighborhood.
About two hours later, at 11:16 AM, police received another report of a bank robbery on Capitol Hill, near Broadway and E. Republican Street.
Again, bank employees said a man—described as a white male in his 20s, about 6’0, with a facial tattoo—had walked into the bank, brandished a knife and demanded money.
A Parking Enforcement officer spotted the suspect walking near Mercer Street and Bellevue Ave E and called for patrol officers, who took him into custody. Police also found two knives on the man and turned him over to Robbery Unit detectives.
Is Seattle trying to become L.A.?
(L.A. has the highest number of bank robberies in the world. I worked at a SoCal BofA in the 90s, and we got robbed once, though I didn’t even know it happened.)
Seattle has had a high bank robbery rate for 20 years — and not all of it was due to Scott Scurlock. (According to the 2011 FBI stats, California has 4 times as many bank robberies as Washington, but has more than 5 times as many people, so on a per-capita basis WA is actually worse).
Yay, we win!
If you want to get away with robbing a bank, maybe you should forgo the facial tattooing.
You might also consider something other than public transit for an escape route, too.
Or walking to the local coffee shop and asking them to call you a cab.
They’re an entertaining bunch, aren’t they?
So this guy robbed the bank a block away from the last Broadway bank robbery, and got one block further than Top Pot.