Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990 TAG: 9003300546
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Tommy Hamilton, 39, was charged in the October 1988 robbery of the Sovran Bank at 2208 Melrose Ave. N.W.
Authorities said they learned of Hamilton's identity from John Talbott, also of Tennessee, who was apprehended last year after a bank robbery in New Orleans.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rusty Fitzgerald said that in the course of telling authorities about the robbery in New Orleans, Talbott revealed three others, including the one in Roanoke. Talbott has pleaded guilty to the crimes.
According to the federal grand jury indictment, Talbott told authorities he and Hamilton drove to Roanoke from Tennessee on Oct. 13, 1988, "to select a bank to rob, finally agreeing on Sovran Bank in Roanoke." The two men spent the night at a Roanoke hotel.
The next morning two men - one wearing an imitation beard purchased at a Kingsport, Tenn., gift shop and the other wearing a bandana and sunglasses - walked into the bank with small-caliber handguns.
The two ordered all the customers to lie on the floor. They told tellers to put money in a grocery-type bag, then took the keys to a red pickup truck belonging to one of the customers.
A packet of dye exploded in the sack as the men were leaving the bank, police said after the robbery. The dye packets are designed to foil robbers, either by scaring them or by rendering the money useless from the stain.
The robbers fled in the pickup with $7,065, the indictment states. The truck later was abandoned behind a drugstore on Ninth Street Northwest, a short distance from the bank.
"They were just looking for a place to rob and thought Roanoke was a good place," Fitzgerald said.
by CNB