Calling all cars! Calling all cars! Be on the lookout for bank robber, unarmed and dangerous.
I’m just guessing that that’s how the all points bulletin went down Monday after a man in a wheelchair robbed a bank in Astoria, Queens.
According to New York NBC affiliate WNBC:
Police say the man wheeled[!] into the Santander bank on Broadway shortly before 2:20 p.m. and passed a teller a note demanding cash.
He fled with $1,212.
Police say they aren’t entirely convinced the robber was genuinely disabled, a deduction they arrived at after finding the abandoned chair several blocks from the bank.
Video captured by a surveillance camera outside a store two doors down from the bank shows the suspect, clad in a gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans. rolling down the sidewalk in a wheelchair.
https://youtu.be/BMogAuM9smU
Police have opened an investigation into the crime, but perhaps they should start by asking themselves why no one was able to catch up to a man whose getaway vehicle, even if it were motorized, would have a top speed of 7 miles per hour.
Remarkably, in the meantime, this is not the first time a wheelchair-bound individual attempted to rob a bank. Idaho station KBOI reported in August 20 2014 that a 60-year-old entered a bank in Twin Falls, Idaho, and robbed it at gunpoint. The culprit, Robert Bower, rode off with an undisclosed amount of cash but was captured in the parking lot soon after.
