{"id":308981,"date":"2010-02-11T20:01:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T01:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/?p=18005"},"modified":"2010-02-11T20:01:47","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T01:01:47","slug":"witness-follows-helps-police-apprehend-armed-bank-robbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/308981","title":{"rendered":"Witness follows, helps police apprehend armed bank robbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alert witness helped police apprehend suspects: FBI<\/h3>\n

Authorities are crediting a quick-thinking onlooker for helping them quickly arrest three men who robbed a bank in the city on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The masked men entered the TCF Bank branch, 6410 W. 127th St., about 5 p.m. Wednesday, and announced the robbery, according to the FBI.<\/p>\n

It said two stood watch at the door while a third man stuck his gun into a tellers back, ordered her to open the banks vault and also directed another teller to stuff a plastic bag with cash. <\/span><\/p>\n

The trio made off with about $118,000 and fled in a pickup truck, but a witness who saw them followed the truck and called police, who caught about a mile from the bank, the FBI said.<\/p>\n

It said police recovered three guns and some shotgun shells from the truck and found each man wearing a bulletproof vest.<\/p>\n

Wali Ali, 64, 4223 S. Prairie Ave., Chicago; Melvin Ratliff, 56, 1201 E. 171st St., South Holland; and James Walker, 51, 513 E. 52nd St., Phoenix, were each charged with aggravated bank robbery.<\/p>\n

They are being held without bail pending a hearing next week in federal court in Chicago.<\/p>\n

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n

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Alert witness helped police apprehend suspects: FBI Authorities are crediting a quick-thinking onlooker for helping them quickly arrest three men who robbed a bank in the city on Wednesday. The masked men entered the TCF Bank branch, 6410 W. 127th St., about 5 p.m. Wednesday, and announced the robbery, according to the FBI. It said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}