Drive-through robber leaves empty-handed

FORT WORTH - The convenience of bank drive-throughs is appealing to more than just customers nowadays. Robbers like them, too. Police say a man drove into Summit Bank's drive-through at 3000 Altamesa Blvd. about 11:30 a.m. Friday and tried unsuccessfully to make a big withdrawal using a robbery note. It was the second such episode in Fort Worth in a little more than a week.

"Maybe it's a lazier breed of bank robber," quipped Fort Worth police robbery Detective J.E. Livesay. In Friday's robbery attempt, the driver of a Chevy Astro van passed the note, tucked inside a small black bag that looked like a shaving kit, through the teller's drawer.

Fill up the bag, the note demanded. Large bills only. Don't sound the alarm. Put the note back in the bag.

The teller who read the note had been on duty during a similar robbery attempt at the bank this year, Livesay said. "She saw the note and read it, and she immediately dropped to the floor and told all the employees they were being robbed again," he said.

Employees took cover and sounded the holdup alarm. The robber, growing impatient, honked his horn after about two minutes and spoke briefly with the bank's manager over the intercom. "She yelled at him, 'What do you want?'," Livesay said. "He said 'I want my deposit back' and she said, 'You don't have a deposit. You're not a customer. You're trying to rob us. Get out of here.'" The robber pulled forward, then stopped and backed up, narrowly missing another vehicle behind him, Livesay said. The robber then fled before officers arrived.

He is described as an unshaven white man in his 40s driving a light blue Chevy Astro minivan with Texas paper tags dated Nov. 21. He has short dark hair and was wearing a brown cap and sunglasses. Livesay said police are investigating whether the robbery attempt is related to an Oct. 27 holdup of the Bank of America at 116 E. Seminary Drive. In that robbery, a man driving a silver or gray 1990s-model pickup passed a note demanding cash, then fled with an undisclosed amount.

In August, Fort Worth police arrested a 39-year-old man suspected of robbing two banks and trying to rob three others using drive-through windows, including one at the Summit Bank. In those robberies, a man whom authorities nicknamed the "drive-through bandit" passed threatening notes to tellers. The robber did not display a weapon and drove different cars, police have said.

Cleo C. Moore, a convicted bank robber who had recently been released from a Fort Worth halfway house, is awaiting trial on federal bank robbery charges in those cases.