FBI seeks two after pizza-man robbery

James Johnson, of Erie, Pennsylvania, talks about the search of his apartment by US federal agents last week. Johnson, whose tools were seized in the investigation of a pizza deliveryman who died after a bank robbery when a bomb locked to his neck exploded, said he has never met the delivery man and is being wrongly targeted by the FBI. PHOTO: AP

The FBI released drawings on Monday of two men wanted for questioning in a bank robbery in Erie, Pennsylvania, last month which resulted in the death of a pizza delivery man, Brian Douglas Wells.

Wells when a bomb locked around his neck exploded shortly after he robbed a PNC Bank on Aug. 28. Before he died, Wells told police that he had been forced by unknown assailants to wear the weapon and rob the bank.

Investigators in a news conference in Erie on Monday that Wells had received detailed instructions in a note to go to four places after the robbery.

Near of those four locations, eyewitnesses saw two different men behaving suspiciously near the time of Wells' death, investigators said.

The FBI said it planned to post sketches based on detailed eyewitness descriptions of the two men on its Web site on yesterday.

At the first location, a drive-through restaurant near the bank, Wells received information telling him he should go to a wooded area near exit 180 of Interstate 79 just south of Erie immediately after the robbery. At around the time of the explosion that killed Wells, a motorist saw a black man wearing a backpack run across a busy road not far from exit 180, investigators said. They described the man as 1.7m tall, in his mid-30s.

"His actions are suspicious and certainly we want to identify this person," said agent Bob Rudge of the FBI.

A second motorist passing through the same area not long after Wells died told investigators that he saw a white man "running feverishly" from another wooded area near exit 180. The man also rushed across a busy street, putting his hands on passing cars to avoid being knocked over.

Rudge that investigators are now virtually certain that Wells, a 46-year-old high school dropout who lived alone with three cats, did not commit the robbery on his own. But he said they have not ruled out the possibility that Wells was a willing co-conspirator in a plot that went disastrously awry.

Investigators also not ruled out the possibility that Wells was telling the truth when he said he was coerced into the robbery, Rudge said.