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The robber entered the Chase Bank at 360 Union Ave. around 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.
According to Mike Sheehan of PIX11 NEWS, he pulled a gun and demanded money, sending people scrambling for cover. But a bank employee triggered a silent alarm and police were waiting as the robber emerged.
He, in turn, “forced a woman hostage” out onto the street with him, said Sheehan, a former homicide detective with the New York City Police Department.
EXCLUSIVE: A bank robber shot and wounded by police in Rutherford on Thursday has unofficially been tied to at least three other holdups, two in North Bergen and one in Clifton, all in the span of three weeks last year, CLIFFVIEW PILOT has learned. CLICK HERE….
(l. to r.) Investors Bank, Clifton; Valley National, North Bergen (also photo on end); Banco Popular, North Bergen
Witnesses reported that the robber had turned the corner onto Wells Place and let the woman go when officers ordered him to drop his weapon.
“I was outside and I heard the officer yell to the guy, ‘Drop the gun! Drop the gun!’,” Cedola, whose towing service is next door to the bank, told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “There was a pause of about 30 seconds or so and then I heard three shots — boom! boom! boom!”
By this point, Cedola said, he’d ducked down behind a truck.
“Then there was a brief pause and I heard one more shot,” aid Cedola, has owned the towing service the past 42 years.
At that point, he said, he pulled the garage doors down and ran back inside his shop.
The robber “was walked away from here” into an ambulance and taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, an officer at the scene told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. One of the bullets hit him in the neck. He was also grazed in the back, either by the same bullet or another, a law enforcement source said.
No civilians or officers were struck, Rutherford Police Lt. Robert Kriston told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. Students at the Union School across the street were kept inside and were later dismissed, he said.
The bank is across Wells Place from the Rutherford fire station that houses volunteer Rescue Co. #5. It was there that FBI agents interviewed bank employees and customers.
“Since this is now an ongoing federal investigation and the only subject is in custody, there will be no further comment from the FBI (including identification of the subject until he is formally charged), and no photographs released, etc., on this matter,” an FBI spokesman said Thursday afternoon.
ALSO SEE: Federal authorities finally caught up to Augusto G. Perez, who was arrested by the FBI this morning and charged with holding up a Weehawken bank and taking money from a customer and a teller there at gunpoint in late February. He had been on the run since. CLICK HERE
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