Apr 05 2005
Nathan and I are part of a bank robbery! (kinda)
Nathan and I went to see a movie last night. As we were driving to the theater, I noticed a stack of cash in the road!
I stopped the car, grabbed the loot without being run over, and continued on to the theater across the street to call the cops.
The stack had a band around it saying $2000 and the top bill was a $20. It sure didn’t look like a hundred bills, so I rifled through it with my thumb while driving, but it was all kinda stuck together. At another stop in traffic, I looked closer and saw the bills had a rubber band or something embedded in them, holding them together. Then I noticed that a lot of the bills in the middle of the bundle were hollowed out and there was some sort of box in there!
HEY! THIS IS AN EXPLODING INK PACKET!!!! THIS IS BANK ROBBER STUFF!!!
I parked at the movie theater and call the nonemergency police number and told this story. It takes a while… 🙂 I carefully put the bundle on my back bumper and wait. People passed us in the parking lot and Nathan shielded the cash with his body. I could just imagine trying to explain the $2000 on my bumper…
A cop showed up in about 10 minutes and told us that a bank down the road was just robbed and started asking lots of questions. Where did you find it? Who touched it (I’d had Nathan take a look, carefully, too)? When did you find it? Did you see anyone else near it? Did you see anyone throw it? We answered his questions and asked him a few. Can we play with your tazer? Can I tazer Nathan? Does he have SCMODS?
He was on the radio with his sarge and the FBI who are at the bank. They asked him if he’s got a witness elimination kit! Cool! We’re gonna be disappeared! Not really, he just needed our prints to eliminate us as suspects when the checked the bundle of cash for prints.
So, picture this scene: A father and his son making print sheets on the back of a police car in front of the movie theater. Just for fun, as we’re doing all this, some lady comes walking up to report that she’s found a missing person from some other case up at the theater. The poor cop was trying to manage us, talk to the other officers and FBI on his radio, and now he’s got some runaway to take care of. He calls in another unit and gets us finished up.
One last episode – as Nathan and I went to a food place to clean up, a tv cameraman came up and asked if we’re the people who found the money and if we want to be on the news. I say, not really. They still don’t have the bad guy captured and he might be a whacko. He says, “I can just shoot your hands, no faces.” I ask the dude if he’s independent (my wife’s an independent artist – only earns when she can sell something) and he says yes. I also thought Nathan would get a kick out of seeing himself (well, his hands) on the news. So, we did it. After the movie we raced home and they ran the footage! I didn’t have any recorder set up on that video tho… Bad geek…
Today I looked around at local coverage and found these reports below. It’s funny how messed up the facts get. The packet did not explode. There was no bag of money, just the one bundle.
Bank Robber Loses Loot but Escapes Arrest
04-05-2005 6:35 AM
(San Diego, CA) — An armed man got away with about 2-thousand-dollars from a Mira Mesa credit union branch Monday afternoon but dropped the bag holding the stolen money when a dye pack exploded. The gunman entered a branch of USA Federal Credit Union in the 10000 block of Black Mountain Road abut 5:40 p.m. Monday and handed a note demanding cash to a teller. He is described as a white male in his teens or early 20s, wearing a baseball cap and blue jeans. A passerby found the bag of cash near the intersection of Mira Mesa Boulevard and Black Mountain Road and called police. San Diego police and the FBI are investigating the robbery.
Mira Mesa Bank Robber At Large
Last Updated:
04-05-05 at 8:47AM
San Diego police report this morning that a gunman robbed the U.S.A. Federal Credit Union on Black Mountain Road yesterday evening and stole $2,000.
A local San Diego resident found the stolen bag of cash and turned it into authorities.
Police say the gunman robbed the bank yesterday evening and apparently dropped the bag after an exploding dye pack was set off.
Nearly 15 minutes later, police say a man called police to report that he found the dyed bills.
The robber remains at large.
Nathan also blogged about it:
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
well, sin city was interesting. on the way to the theater, we found a stck of 20s in the middle of the road. of course, my dad had to pick it up. turns out it had blue dye in it and had been dropped into the road by a bank robber. so we called the police, learned about said bank robbery, and got fingerprinted. no, i didn’t do it, it was to cross me off the list of suspects. at some point during all the questioning and paper work, someone came up to report that they had found a missing person. at this point, the policeman’s head exploded. as we walked away, we were jumped by some indie journalist guy and got our hands taped. that’s right. part of my hand and arm were on tv for a whole 2-3 seconds. i’m famous now; leave the sacrifices at the door. now, i leave it to you to figure out which parts of this are true.