Carpinteria – “The Official Rules for Successfully Robbing a Bank” should probably include the following: 1) Never rob a bank during commuter rush hour. 2) Never rob a bank and then escape on a freeway where no offramps exist for 15 miles. 3) Never rob a bank in an easily-identified newer car with six cylinders or less.
These fundamentals were clearly ignored on the morning of March 31st when, at 9:00 a.m. Terry Ray Hornbeck, 53, and Mary Lee Johnson, 49, both Los Angeles residents, who had perhaps mistakenly thought themselves akin to a modern-day Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow of movie dialogue “we rob banks” fame, strolled into the Carpinteria branch of Chase Bank. After relieving the bank tellers of their cash, the pair then drove away in what Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Lt. Butch Arnoldi described as “a newer model silver Hyundai”.
The sad fact of the matter is that escape routes from that bank are few and far between. There is, in fact, only one direction of travel if one intends to vacate the area before the arrival of any law enforcement personnel, and it leads directly onto the U.S. 101 southbound in the direction of Ventura, some 20 miles distant. As if the vehicular congestion and constant pedestrian traffic at that hour wasn’t challenging enough, the fact that there are very few offramps leading away from that freeway heading southbound certainly made any successful flight doubtful.
Proof of that came when the suspect vehicle was promptly spotted by a passing patrol deputy from the SBSD Carpinteria Sheriff Station just blocks away from the targeted bank, whereupon the deputy followed the Hyundai pending the arrival of additional law enforcement units. Just seventeen minutes after the robbery, units from the SBSD, the Ventura County Sheriff, and the CHP conducted what Arnoldi referred to as a “high risk stop” of the vehicle, and promptly took Hornbeck and Johnson into custody. Hornbeck was found to be in possession of brass knuckles and an undisclosed amount of cocaine, as well as evidence of the robbery.
Both Hornbeck and Johnson were transported to Santa Barbara County Jail and booked on charges of bank robbery, where they’re currently held on $100,000 bail.
Read more:
KCLU: Two arrested in Ventura county robbery
Independent: Two suspects arrested for robbing bank
KCOY: Carpinteria bank robbed
