SEQUIM — A bicycle-riding bank robber who wore a grotesque mask while getting his loot Monday morning remained at large Monday evening, a Sequim police spokeswoman said.
Lt. Sheri Crain described the unarmed robber as a white male based on what witnesses saw at a distance before he donned a mask, pulled up the hood of a sweatshirt over his head and entered the KeyBank branch at 120 N Dunlap Ave.
He then fled on a blue mountain bike with a white stripe, Crain said.
The bandit was further described as being between ages 30 and 50 years, about 6 feet tall, 180 pounds with an athletic build and shoulder-length blond hair.
The “hoody” sweatshirt was navy blue and had a zipper front which the robber had zipped up, according to surveillance camera images from the bank.
He was wearing bluejeans.
No one was hurt in the 10:20 a.m. robbery in which a teller complied with the masked man’s demand to put money in the white bag he held open.
“It was a small amount. We’re not going to release the amount at this time,” said Crain, who assisted other officers in interviewing bank employee witnesses at the scene.
The robber took off on his bicycle down West Cedar Street.
“We’ve been canvassing the area, looking for witnesses” in the neighborhood north of East Washington Street and east of North Sequim Avenue, Crain said.
Witness reports of money flying out of the man’s bag or pockets as he fled on the bicycle were unsubstantiated and no lost money was recovered, authorities said.
Crain said the FBI office in Silverdale was called into assist in the investigation, and several Sequim officers were involved in the probe, staking out parts of the neighborhood and with the department’s German shepherd tracking dog.
The dog, faced with gusting winds, did not catch the suspect’s scent, she said.
Monday’s heist was the first bank robbery in Sequim since Kitsap Bank on East Washington Street was hit in May 2006.
That hold-up was done by an older man wearing a plaid shirt, baseball hat and sunglasses, and he might have been responsible for at least another holdup on the North Olympic Peninsula.
“We’re looking for people who may have seen someone,” Crain said about Monday’s ugly-mask heist at KeyBank.
“We probably just missed him by seconds.”
Anyone with information about Monday’s robbery is asked to contact Sgt. Sean Madison at 360-683-7227.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
