by Lee Butcher
She ran into the back room, where there were windows that looked out over the street. She was hoping to see what kind of a vehicle they were driving. Then she saw that one of them had a gun. She pushed the panic button that set off a silent alarm to notify police that there was trouble at the bank.
Chino jumped over the counter and started pulling and shaking drawers, but he couldn’t get them open. Delarocha noticed that he was wearing a fishing hat and a scarf, baggy pants and a loose top, and a bandanna covered the lower part of his face from just below his eyes. The eyes were concealed by dark sunglasses.
Chino managed to yank one of her money drawers open and grabbed several stacks of currency. Delarocha noticed that he grabbed one of the “bait” stacks, which contained a dye pack hidden inside.
Paula pointed her gun at the floor, instead of at the prostrate customers and employees. “Stay down!” she yelled. “Keep your heads down!”
The robbers left as quickly as they had arrived. Delarocha had seen what kind of car they were driving: it was a bright yellow Nissan Xterra SUV.
She picked up the telephone and dialed 911.
“What is your emergency?” the operator asked.
“This is 1501 South Church Avenue. We just got robbed. This is Bank of America.”
“Okay. Are there any injuries?”
“No, but he had a gun. Please.”
“Okay, ma’am,” the operator shouted.
“Yes?”
“I need you to take a deep breath and calm down for me. Are the doors locked?”
“Yes. We just locked the doors.”
“Okay. There’s no injuries and the suspect is gone, right?” the dispatcher inquired.
“The suspect is gone.”
Dr. Woody Leal York heard what he thought of as “commotion” outside the bank as he waited to be taken to a vault. At first he thought somebody had been hurt in the parking lot, and he wondered if he should go out and offer help. Then he saw two people running toward the bank.
As he wondered what had happened, the two people came hurrying inside. He could see how they were dressed and realized immediately what was happening. At least one of them was armed. They were no more than five yards from him.
There were nine or ten people in the bank, two customers with a bank employee behind Dr. York, a sweet-looking old lady sitting in a chair across from him, four or five people in line, and three tellers. He thought there might have been more.
Things happened quickly. Dr. York realized something was wrong when he got a better look and saw bandannas covering the lower parts of their faces. He couldn’t tell whether they were men or women, but he believed one was a female and that she was armed. He thought the gun was a Beretta. Although he knew little about guns, he owned a 9mm Beretta and the gun was at least that big.
“It was very noticeable,” he said. “And it wasn’t a little bitty weapon.”
The robbers started screaming orders. “Get down! Everybody put your face on the ground! Get down!” Everybody in the bank jumped to the floor at the first command, except for the white-haired old lady, who was sitting near the doctor.
Dr. York was frightened for her. She seemed to be close to ninety years of age. He thought he heard her say, “I can’t get down.” Dr. York was having trouble himself. Surgery on both his knees the preceding January had made it difficult for him to bend them. He was hoping he got down fast enough so he wouldn’t be shot and killed.
“Keep your heads down and don’t look!” Chino yelled. “This is a bank robbery. This is not make-believe. This is the real thing. Don’t anyone pull any tricks on me.”
Chino’s voice was forceful and threatening enough to make everybody comply. His voice wasn’t nervous or hysterical. Clearly, he meant business. “This is a damn bank robbery!” Chino said. “Get down and stay down!”
Paula kept the room covered with the MAC-11. She stood not more than two feet in front of Dr. York, her legs spread-eagled. He noticed that she wore tennis shoes. She stood facing Dr. York and she checked the room repeatedly and said forcefully, but not as loud as Chino, “Don’t anyone look up. Don’t anyone dare look up. Whatever you do, do not look up.”
The one thing that made Dr. York feel somewhat secure was that the robbers seemed to be in control of themselves. Their voices were not nervous or quavering, but strong and forceful. He was not as calm. He felt hysterical as he worried that somebody might come in from the back. He was afraid of anything that might set off frayed nerves and cause a bloodbath. What frightened him the most was that a customer might become hysterical or start crying and upset the robbers and cause them to start shooting.
Dr. York felt confident the robbers would do them no harm so long as the victims did exactly as they were told. It seemed to take Chino a long time to get the money. All the while, Dr. York thought, Don’t anyone come in! Just take the money and get out!
After what seemed like a long time, Chino jumped back over the counter and the robbers headed out the door. “You folks have a nice day,” he said sarcastically. “Don’t dare look up when we leave the bank. Don’t look up!”
Naturally, Dr. York and the others looked up as soon as the robbers were out the door. He could give a good description of their heights and builds to the police. When he looked out to see what kind of a vehicle they had, he was surprised. “It was the brightest yellow SUV I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It was parked right next to my car.”
A teller yelled, “Lock the doors! Lock the doors!”
Dr. York looked at the time. The robbery had taken only eight minutes. The police arrived just three minutes after the robbers left.
Kelley Cruey and her fiancé, Tyler Welches, weren’t regular customers at the Tampa bank. They lived in Ormond Beach, a small town near Daytona Beach, about three hours from Tampa on I-4. They were in the bank because Tyler’s company had a job in Tampa working on a storage unit and he needed cash to pay his crew.
Ordinarily, Tyler left the banking to Kelley. But on July 6, 2001, he decided to go to the bank with her. They were the only customers at the counter when a man suddenly ran in and said, “This is a stickup!” Kelley went blank with fear when she saw a gun pointed right at her. She didn’t know what kind of a gun, but it was big. She was paralyzed.
They were approaching a teller at the counter just as the gunman came screaming through the door, and said, “Everybody hit the floor!” as he waved the gun around. He jumped over the counter right next to Tyler, who was just finishing his transaction. He had withdrawn cash to pay his crew. The payroll amount varied weekly, but on that day, it was several thousand dollars; he wasn’t sure of the exact figure.
The robber was within five feet of him. He knew it was a man because of the voice, the way he yelled and screamed, and the way he moved. He was also strong enough to jump over the counter.
When somebody’s waving a gun, that’s threatening enough, Tyler thought. When they ordered you to hit the floor, you hit the floor. After the intruder jumped over the counter, he was screaming at them, threatening, giving orders. Tyler grabbed his girlfriend and shoved her to the ground and got on top of her, using his body to shield her.
A smaller robber with a gun charged in. “Everyone just stay down and no one will get hurt!” she said. “Keep your heads down and this will be over in a minute.” Both Kelley and Tyler believed the person giving orders was a woman. Tyler didn’t think a man could imitate a woman’s voice so accurately.
Tyler had several thousand in his hand and his fi-ancée was frozen. As soon as he saw the gun, Tyler folded the payroll cash and jammed it into his shorts. He hoped the robbers wouldn’t find it. Kelley never looked up again. She heard a man say—in what she called a smart-aleck voice—“Have a nice day.”
Kelley couldn’t give police a description of the robbers. First, because Tyler had kept her head down so that she saw only the tile floor, and second, because she was so scared. “I was so shook up, I don’t know,” she said. “All I wanted to
do was get the hell out of there. That’s all I wanted.”
Tyler thought the bigger man carried a gun with a strap on it. He seemed to have it wrapped around his right arm so that his right hand was free to hold the gun. What Tyler probably saw was the blue bag that Chino carried. There was only one gun used in the robbery—the MAC-11 that Paula wielded.
Although Tyler had been ordered to keep his head down, he couldn’t resist looking around initially, to see if there was any way he could help. The female robber ordered him to put his head back down. She walked straight ahead, and then turned and said, “Keep your heads down, do not look up at us, and do not move, and we’ll be out of here in a second.”
Tyler couldn’t tell what kind of a gun it was because things happened too fast. He thought he had a pretty good description of what they wore. “They had boots on, khaki clothes, lighter, tan clothes, and dark coats, a jacket or something like that, and they had handkerchiefs over their faces.” That was all he had seen.
Tyler agreed with the other witnesses that the robbery was fast. He thought it took about two minutes. “It was really quick. He was in, over the counter, and out.”
The robbers fled, after having robbed the bank of just under $10,000.
Senior Patrol Officer Lois Marrero was an exact opposite of Chino DeJesus in almost every way. He was brooding, morose, angry, and blamed the world for being an ugly place with the cards stacked against him. Lois was bright, cheerful, optimistic, loved people, and thought the world was a wonderful place, especially when there were opportunities to help others.
A pretty, petite brunette who looked younger than her forty-one years, Lois had been with the Tampa Police Department (TPD) for a little more than eighteen years and was looking forward to retirement. Every day for her was a new, exciting adventure, to learn, grow, and help others.
Years before, she had met Mickie Mashburn, who was also an officer in the Tampa Police Department. Mickie was an attractive blonde who nicely complemented Lois. The two women got along fabulously. They fell in love in 1990 and became committed life partners in a 1991 ceremony at the Sovereign Evangelist Church, presided over by a duly ordained minister. They were married in the eyes of their church, even though same-sex marriages weren’t recognized by the state of Florida.
This was never a problem in the police department. Superiors and coworkers considered them spouses. Mickie had less than two years to serve before she, too, would become eligible for retirement. Both were looking forward to having more time to travel, tend their garden, play with their dogs, and to work at part-time jobs.
Being a cop is a dangerous job, especially in Florida, where even grandmothers and grandfathers frequently have licenses to carry concealed weapons. A case of simple road rage can sometimes end in a shoot-out and death. A routine stop for a traffic violation can put a cop on edge because he never knows who he’s stopping, whether or not the subject has a gun, and if he is ready to use it. Everyone has heard about normally congenial postal workers who go on murderous rampages, but those are few and far between. A cop’s life is at risk every time he, or she, goes on duty. There is a saying among cops: “There is no such thing as a routine encounter.”
No one understood this any better than Mickie and Lois. They were veteran police officers and they sometimes talked about the dangers. They worried about one another. Mickie was especially concerned because Lois worked on the streets, a particularly dangerous aspect of police work, but it was what Lois loved. They made certain they told each other every morning how they felt about one another. Mickie would say: “I love you more today than yesterday.” Lois would reply, “Me too.”
Lois was in a particularly good mood on the morning of July 6, 2001. She and Mickie were looking forward to seeing a woman’s basketball team, the Miracles, play in Orlando that night. Mickie, on the other hand, had an uneasy feeling, as if there were an inexplicable threat hanging in the air. The whole week had been strange, with a feeling that dark clouds were forming. Lois told Mickie that she had even talked with one of her supervisors about her own death.
That morning Lois was turned out to perfection, as always, not a wrinkle on her razor-sharp uniform, shoes and leather work all spit and polish. She liked to look sharp, and she did. She was really excited about going to the basketball game later. Mickie worried that Lois pushed herself too hard, even when it came to having fun.
“You’ve got to rest sometime,” Mickie told her.
Lois just laughed. “When you die, you can sleep.”
She looked out at the flower garden she loved and said good-bye to Kilo, her Rottweiler, and stepped into the bright sunny day to go to work. She believed, as did Mickie, that “when the Lord opens the book and says, ‘Today is for you,’ that’s it.” Once on the job, Lois didn’t even think about such things.
Around 9:30 A.M., Lois and Mickie chatted again on their cellular telephones just to see how things were going. At 10:30 A.M., Lois telephoned again, but Mickie wasn’t available. Lois punched in a numerical message for Mickie’s beeper, as she often did. The message was: 45683968. Those were the telephone keys that spelled “I love you.” They were chatting again later when Mickie heard the buzzer on Lois’s personal radio go off.
“Oops, I gotta go right now,” Lois said.
“I had this feeling” Mickie said later. “It was like I got the chills.”
To Lois, she said, “Please be careful. I love you. Be careful.”
Chapter 2
When Chino and Paula fled the Bank of America, they were already in big trouble. The robbery had been reported twice before it even occurred, once while it was in progress, and again just after it was over.
Now they were going to have trouble with technology. Banks use dye packs to help them recover stolen money and to make it easier to catch robbers. The Bank of America and its branches routinely stash these “bait” dye packs inside stacks of money. The dye packs are simple and efficient.
Dye packs were invented to make bank robbery a profitless enterprise and, hopefully, extinct. Called a Security Pack, it is placed in the middle of a stack of bills. A few years ago, the pack was made with stiff plastic and could sometimes be detected by a bank robber; now the pack is so thin and pliable that only the most skilled robber would be able to feel it inside a stack of paper money.
Seventy-five percent of the dye packs used by banks in the United States are made by ICI Security Systems. Bank tellers have several packs near their windows at all times. The packs are kept in a “safe” mode by being attached to a magnetic plate. A small radio receiver inside the pack is activated by a transmitter mounted in the jamb of entry and exit doors of the bank. Once the pack passes through the door, its detonation device is activated and set to explode a few seconds later, after the robbers are a safe distance from people in the bank.
Chino and Paula didn’t know there was a dye pack inside the money he had stuffed in his bag. After tossing the bag containing the cash in the backseat, Chino gunned the SUV to make a getaway. He hadn’t gone more than a block when there was an explosion.
Red smoke, tear gas, and a dye called methyl-amino-anthraquinone filled the interior of the vehicle. Neither he nor Paula could see or breathe. Both went into fits of coughing and tears gushed from their burning eyes. Paula’s lungs felt like they were on fire. Smoke and red dye were everywhere. Chino opened all of the windows, but he still couldn’t get rid of the tear gas.
At the same time the dye pack detonated, a chemical reaction took place that caused the pack to reach a temperature of 400 degrees. The heat isn’t enough to set the money on fire, but it can blister skin, making it too hot to handle. Robbers frequently throw the money away in an attempt to ease their suffering.
That’s what Chino did. Desperate for relief, he found the bag containing the cash in the backseat and tossed it, money and all, out a window. Only a few of the stained bills remained in the vehicle.
Caesar Rodriguez pulled out of his driveway when a yellow SUV raced by
. The driver seemed to be throwing trash out of the window. He thought they were emptying a garbage bag and it made him mad.
“Asshole!” he yelled at them.
Then he noticed that the people in the SUV hadn’t been getting rid of garbage, after all. They were tossing money out of their car. Lots of it. Stacks of bills hit the ground and a burst of money fluttered up like a gathering of migrating butterflies. The money scattered over a city block and was splotched with red. Rodriguez could smell the tear gas.
One of his neighbors had come over to see what was happening. Rodriguez said, “It’s raining money. I think it’s money from a robbery. Go call the cops.”
While they were waiting for the police to arrive, Rodriguez took a snapshot of his neighbor standing in the field of strewn money. Only a few minutes passed before a police car arrived. Rodriguez told the patrolman which way the SUV was heading and the officer left in a hurry, speaking into his radio as he sped away in hot pursuit. The police already knew what type of vehicle the robbers were driving; now they had narrowed down the area in which they were located. It was just a matter of time before they were caught.
In fact, police radios had been crackling with updates since the first “robbery in progress” was reported at 10:42 A.M. Officer Edward Durkin was serving as dispatcher to route the calls. He handled the first reports to and from the units that carried the code name “David” (for the letter D).
“David nine-one-one,” Durkin said. “David nine-one-one. Stand by a minute, David seven and David eight.”
David 8: “Go ahead.”
Durkin: “Both units copy a twenty-three (armed robbery) to the Bank of America at Church and Neptune, Church and Neptune, reference an eyewitness advising two men wearing blue masks and carrying a blue bag, entering the building.”
David 8: “Ten-four (understood). This is in progress then?”
