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Bank robbed on Glenwood’s bustling Grand Avenue

Surveillance footage of the robbery suspect at Glenwood Springs' Vectra Bank.
Staff Photo | Glenwood Springs Police Departme

As tourists and downtown workers crowded Glenwood Springs sidewalks at 5:30 p.m. Friday, a man robbed a bank at the town’s busiest intersection and fled on foot down Grand Avenue.

Police Chief Terry Wilson said a white man “wearing a really odd straw bucket hat and big sunglasses, so he was very concealed,” walked in the front entrance of Vectra Bank at Eighth Street and Grand Avenue. One of his hands was concealed, Wilson said, and “he implied he had a weapon.”

No one was injured and the man ran away with an undisclosed amount of cash, heading south on Grand.



Glenwood police and Garfield County sheriff’s deputies were at the bank, and Wilson said the FBI was notified.

“What’s amazing to me is he ran down Grand” in unusual attire “and the only call we got was the 911 call from the bank,” Wilson said.



Bank robberies are rare in Glenwood. The most recent one before Friday was June 30, 2014.

Jack Lee Wright, 52, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, pleaded guilty in federal court that case. Wright was suspected of a cross-country robbery spree that included banks in Texas and Florida.

At the West Glenwood Alpine Bank, a man wearing a blue T-shirt and blue and white checkered shorts walked in, put a backpack on the counter, showed a black semiautomatic handgun and passed a note to the teller demanding money. He left the bank with $18,958, documents showed.

Arrested in Maryland, Wright was identified by a Rifle motel operator.

Before that, the last bank robbery in town was of the US Bank in April 2012. ~


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