Authorities yesterday morning raided a house in Taichung and apprehended a man suspected of stealing NT$722,000 from a branch of Taishin Bank in the city’s Fengjia District (逢甲) in an armed robbery on Friday afternoon.
The Taichung Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division tracked and identified the suspect from video footage taken by surveillance cameras in the bank and on the city’s streets, police officers said.
The city’s Police Precinct No. 6 criminal investigation unit chief Chang Kuo-yi (張國益) and other officers worked through the night on the video footage and other evidence, and were able to locate the whereabouts of the 37-year-old suspect, surnamed Lo (羅).
“We recovered about NT$600,000 from the bank heist at Lo’s place, and he said some of the money form the bank heist had already been delivered to people he owed money to,” Chang said, adding that the banknotes they found matched serial numbers of those that were stolen.
“We caught the suspect and solved this case 12 hours after the robbery. This shows the police agency’s resolve to crack down on crime and to ensure a secure and peaceful society,” Chang added.
The bank robber wore a motorcycle helmet and a facial mask as a disguise, and while holding up a toy pistol, he sprayed some kind of irritant at a bank clerk and two customers, causing a scene of great agitation.
During the confusion, the suspect grabbed several stacks of banknotes from the clerk’s cash drawer, then ran onto the street outside, where his movement was recorded by surveillance cameras.
The footage showed that the suspect went into a back alley and changed into clothing of a different color, in an attempt to throw off police.
Lo had admitted to the crime, which he said had been motivated by huge debts he had racked up through an addiction to online gambling, police officers said.
Police officers said Lo had admitting to spraying a liquid in the bank that he made from a mixture of muscle pain relief lotion and pepper spray, adding that some of the liquid was found in a plastic bottle at his house.
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