Fleet Bank Hit; Robber Eludes Capture

By Andrew Gorosko

In a low-key bank robbery, during which people within Fleet Bank were unaware of what was happening, a lone man stole cash from a female bank teller Tuesday morning and then quietly slipped out the front door of the Queen Street building, eluding capture.

Police said they were alerted about 10:20 am that a robbery had occurred at the local Fleet Bank office at 6 Queen Street. The bank, which faces Queen Street, is in Newtown Shopping Village.

Police happened to be in the area at the time and responded swiftly to the incident, but the bank robber eluded them. Eight police responded to the scene. Police did not disclose the amount of cash stolen.

On Thursday morning, Newtown police were coordinating their bank robbery investigation with West Hartford police concerning a very similar bank robbery that occurred on Wednesday afternoon at a People’s Bank branch office in West Hartford.

Police Lieutenant James Mooney described the bandit in the Newtown bank robbery as a white male in his mid 20s, who is short, with a medium-to-small build. The man has close-cropped dark hair. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses and dark leather gloves, plus a bulky tan, zippered, sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had a hood, which was off the man’s head. The man is estimated to be five feet, five inches tall.

Lt Mooney said the man uneventfully entered Fleet Bank and handed a middle-aged female teller a note stating that he had a gun and indicating that the teller should hand over money to him. No weapon was shown during the incident, police said. There were no injuries.

The teller handed over an unspecified amount of cash to the man and he then left the bank through the front door. The man was in the bank for only a short time. No getaway vehicle was observed, according to police.

“It was not a situation that drew attention,” Lt Mooney said. Most of the about ten people in the bank during the incident were bank staffers, the lieutenant said.

The front door of the bank opens out onto a little-used sidewalk on the heavily traveled Queen Street. The rear door of the bank opens out onto the parking lot of Newtown Shopping Village, an area where there is much vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

West Hartford Robbery

Lt Mooney said Thursday morning that the bank robbery that occurred Wednesday afternoon in West Hartford bore “tremendous similarities” to the Newtown incident. The bandit in the West Hartford robbery bears a strong physical resemblance to the man who held up the Fleet Bank in Newtown, and the method of operation in both crimes was very similar, Lt Mooney said.

“We’re investigating a strong possibility that it’s the same individual” who robbed both banks, the lieutenant said.

A West Hartford police spokesman was not available for comment Thursday morning.

In Newtown, while the bank robbery was occurring, a work crew was maintaining an automatic teller machine positioned on the north side of Fleet Bank.

Just after the robbery happened, an armored car pulled up to the rear entrance of the bank. Police said the armored car was not involved in the robbery, but just happened to pull up to the bank after the incident took place. The armored car soon left the area.

As police conducted their initial investigation, heavy traffic flow in and out of the shopping center continued, with many people stopping and asking what had happened. The bank was ringed with bright yellow “crime scene” tape.

Traffic was heavier than normal on Queen Street that day due to town budget referendum voting that was taking place at the nearby Newtown Middle School.

Bankers posted notices on the bank’s doors explaining that it was closed due to an emergency and that customers who needed to do banking should do so at other Fleet Bank branches in the area.

Lt Mooney said police have contacted the FBI about the bank robbery. Police also have distributed copies of a bank surveillance photo to other law enforcement agencies for aid in identifying the robber.

Detective Joseph Joudy is the lead investigator. Police ask anyone with information about the crime to contact him at 426-5841.

The Fleet Bank office, which was robbed on Tuesday, was the scene of a March 2000 bank robbery, which was the first bank robbery that had occurred in Newtown in decades.

Three years later, in May 2003, another bank robbery took place at People’s Bank, which also is in Newtown Shopping Village.

The People’s Bank office was one of six banks that were robbed during a two-day period by Pamela Kaichen, 44, of New York State. Kaichen is serving a four-year prison sentence for those robberies.