Suspect sought in bank robbery
REDSTONE TWP. – Police are seeking a suspect who robbed the National City Bank on National Pike East Tuesday. State and local police, as well as the FBI, were investigating the 10:45 a.m. incident at the crowded bank. Most of the customers had no idea the bank had been robbed until they were told by bank employees. They were then locked inside until police arrived.
“There was a long line. I was in the back and didn’t know they had been robbed until they locked the doors,” said Kathryn John of Brownsville. “Whoever he was, he was a smooth operator.”
One man, Harold Workman of Grindstone, was allowed to leave the bank earlier because of a doctor’s appointment.
“There was this young dude standing there being taken care of. The next thing I know, he was walking out with a huge wad of money in his hand,” Workman said.
Workman described the man as in his 20s with a short, black leather jacket and dark hair.
Gary Crevda, who had dropped his brother off at the bank shortly before the robbery, gave police a similar description of the man he saw leaving the bank.
“I seen him with a wad of money. He shoved it into his pocket. I know he was in an awful hurry,” Crevda said. “It was unusual that he didn’t have it in an envelope or nothing.”
Crevda said the man got into a four-door, blue Chevrolet Cavalier driven by a woman with gray hair. Crevda said the car headed west on Old Route 40, toward Brownsville. Police and constables combed the area looking for a vehicle matching the description.
Trooper Alec Hamilton from the state police forensics unit in Uniontown lifted a handprint from the door of the bank that may have been left by the suspect. Video evidence was being processed by the FBI.
Police said witnesses inside the bank described the suspect as being a white male in his late 20s with dark, shoulder-length hair. He is approximately five-foot-eight inches tall and weighs between 160 and 180 pounds. He told the teller that he had a gun in his pocket, though he never displayed a weapon.
It is the second robbery to occur in the greater Brownsville area in two days.
The A-Plus Mini Mart in Brownsville was held up at gunpoint early Monday morning. The suspect in that robbery is described as a short, slim, white male wearing a ski mask and a long coat. No other details are available about that robbery.