Bank Of America Manager Had Explosives Device Strapped To Her Stomach by Gunmen During East LA Robbery [Video]
From the archive: published Sep 5, 2012, 14 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Los Angeles, CA – Two armed gunmen wearing ski masks kidnapped a female Bank of America manager and attached an explosives device to her body. The woman was forced to go inside the East LA financial institution branch and demand money from her staff. The kidnapping occurred around 8:30 am on Wednesday morning. The East LA Sheriff’s Office received a robbery-in-progress alert and arrived on scene to find the manager still wearing what she was told was an explosive mechanism.
The bomb squad, SWAT team, and armed deputies immediately responded to the scene, NBC News reports. A sheriff’s deputy removed the small explosive device which was taped to the branch official’s body before a bomb squad robot was deployed. A member of the explosives team surrounded the potentially deadly mechanism with sand bags approximately one hour later. Aerial video footage shows the robot fired some type of shell casing-style projectile into the sand bag fortress.
The Bank of America kidnapping victim said she was accosted near Huntington Park and had the weapon strapped to her stomach, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Duran’s statements to My Fox LA News . Once inside the BoA building, the victim told her staffers to take money from their drawers and place it outside the building.
Law enforcement officers are reportedly still searching for the two armed men who kidnapped the woman. Alliance Media Arts and Entertainment Design High School near the Bank of America building was placed on lockdown after the search for the armed robbers began.
Robbery updates will be published as soon as they become available.