A brazen daylight bank robbery in Newhall Monday afternoon saw the robber escape with an undisclosed amount of money, having warned a teller he had a gun although no gun was seen.
“It was a lone male, white, last seen leaving the scene on foot,” Sgt. Dan Peacock of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station said.
Shortly before 3 p.m. Monday, a lone male walked into the bank branch of Wells Fargo near the intersection of Lyons Avenue and Wiley Canyon Road and gave a note to a teller demanding money and indicating he had a gun, Shirley Miller, spokeswoman for the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station confirmed for The Signal Monday.
No gun was seen, no shots were fired and no one was reportedly hurt in the incident, Peacock said.
The only description of the robbery suspect that investigators are releasing was that he wore a brown baseball cap and a white shirt.
At least four deputies locked the doors of the bank while they interviewed banking staff about the incident.
A bank representative taped a single page notice to the bank’s glass door explaining to customers about the bank closure.
The sign read: “We are unexpectedly closed due to an emergency and will reopen as soon as possible.”
Customers showing up at the bank, pulled on the locked door, then reading the notice expressed frustration and disappointment.
“When you see a bunch of cops outside a bank you get a little nervous,” said one woman arriving at the bank only to find it closed.
A man expecting to conduct some banking business, signed heavily when he learned of the closure.
“The ATM still works, right?,” he asked.
At 4:30 p.m., a sheriff’s investigator entered the bank with a camera in one hand a black backpack in the other.
He was asked by the reporter if the bag contained tools to lift fingerprints.
“Yes,” he said, entering the bank.
At least two of SCV’s bank robberies ended with arrests made elsewhere.
The search for a bank robber dubbed the “whitewashed Bandit” because he wore a white suit and a white fedora ended with the arrest of a Bakersfield man in Covina, about 10 days after he allegedly robbed the U.S. Bank branch on Newhall Ranch Road at Gateway Village in February 2016.
A woman dubbed the ““Bombshell bandit” was arrested in Nevada in September 2014, less than three months after she robbed the Bank of the West branch on Magic Mountain Parkway at McBean Parkway.
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