Fleet Bank inside Stop & Shop held up Aug. 24
Published on August 30th, 2000
STONEHAM, MA - Not everybody endures faceless delays at the morphing BayBank - BankBoston - Fleet Bank.
Without dialing one for anything, a man robbed the Fleet branch inside Stop 'n Shop at 259 Main St. Thursday night.
At 6:54 p.m. on Aug. 24. police responded to the call, the fourth bank robbery on Main Street Stoneham in 14 months.
The Fleet teller windows are opposite the checkout lines for Stop 'n Shop. Only an open aisle separates customers from the grocery baggers. The crowd noise from active shopping traffic is punctuated by beeping registers.
With the noise and the crowd, someone who did not want to get noticed could feel comfortable.
John Trahon of the FBI Bank Robbery Task Force said banks should work to make prospective robbers uncomfortable.
"Putting someone out on the floor to greet customers," he suggested. But there is no real floor. Customers just step right in from the supermarket.
And Trahon recommended full-length glass dividers with deal trays for exchanging money.
"You have to take away the robber's ability to take control," Trahon said.
The glass divider at the Stop 'n Shop Fleet only comes halfway down from the ceiling; a person at the counter could poke a teller in the stomach.
The day after the robbery, a janitor hands toilet paper through to one Fleet staffer as another employee passes a note under the glass to The Independent — a public relations phone number.
"We have pictures from the bank camera," said Stoneham Police Detective Ed Peek.
The FBI is handling the investigation. An FBI spokesperson described the suspect as a fair-skinned white male with a medium build, blue eyes, a pockmarked face and an earring in his left ear. The scarfaced thug was wearing a Yankees hat at the time of the robbery.
The robber passed a note to a teller and "implied he was armed," Peek said. No one saw a weapon, but pretending is enough to earn an armed robbery charge.
The suspect escaped with "an undetermined amount...in 100s, 50s and 20s," according to police.
Fleet, Stoneham Police and the FBI would not release figures.
But thinking in ballpark estimates, no robber has snatched more than $7,500 in the last three Main Street jobs.
And the FBI catches around 60 to 70 percent of the bank robbers in the Greater Boston area in the first year, more with time, according to Trahon.
Two out of the last three crews to hit Stoneham were eventually nabbed.
Connection?
Woburn police are looking for a suspect of similar description — 30s, white, fair skin — wanted for stealing $400 from the Howard Johnson Hotel on Montvale Avenue in Woburn at 9:05 p.m. last Thursday.
On Aug. 17 a single male suspect robbed the Sovereign Bank on Main Street in Melrose. Some witnesses remembered "a light-skinned male."
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