ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 8, 1996 TAG: 9602080040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
Calvin T. Greene, who said he robbed four Roanoke banks to pay medical bills for his ailing son, was sentenced Wednesday to 17 years in prison.
"My son's health ... is the main reason for what I've done," Greene, 27, wrote in a letter to Judge Diane Strickland.
But at a hearing in Roanoke Circuit Court, Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony chipped away at Greene's hard-luck story that his infant son, who suffers from severe asthma, needed a breathing machine to stay alive.
The boy already had a breathing machine during the time Greene was holding up banks at gunpoint last winter, Anthony said. And when questioned by Anthony, the mother of Greene's two children conceded that the family also was receiving Medicaid and Social Security benefits, Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps.
"These robberies are particularly heinous because there was no particular reason for them, and the defendant has indicated no sorrow for them," Anthony said.
Greene did not testify Wednesday. When confronted earlier with the fact that his son had a breathing machine at the time of the robberies, he told authorities that he wanted his son to have one that was not paid for with government money.
In October, Greene pleaded guilty to robbing four banks - the last one by holding up a drive-through window.
Prosecutors said he wore a ski mask, brandished a handgun and ordered tellers to put cash into a pillowcase during the first three robberies. Greene got caught after changing his method for the fourth robbery; an off-duty Roanoke County firefighter chased him down after seeing him walk up to a drive-through window of the First Union National Bank branch on Williamson Road the afternoon of March 27, brandishing a gun and demanding money.
In that robbery plus the other three - involving the Nationsbank on Melrose Avenue on Feb. 2, the First Union branch on McClanahan Street on Feb. 24, and the VARO Federal Credit Union on Melrose on March 9 - Greene made off with a total of $9,700.
Although he first admitted to police that he robbed all four banks, Greene later changed his story to take responsibility only for the drive-through holdup.
In sentencing Greene to 36 years, to be suspended after he serves 17, Strickland said she was taking into consideration, among other things, the impact his crimes had on the victims. One teller was so terrorized that she quit her job.
Greene will be eligible for release after he serves 85 percent of his sentence, or 141/2 years.
Defense attorney Tony Anderson said his client, a high-school graduate who held a variety of laborer's jobs, did not have a criminal background.
"There's nothing to suggest that he would end up as a bank robber," Anderson said.
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