A KEYSTONE KOPS KIND OF HOLDUP - Robbers Strike Traders Bank

(07/27/2003)
It was a Keystone Kops kind of bank robbery yesterday.

They hit the Traders Bank in Ripley.

Two men held up a Ripley bank before noon Saturday, starting a chase that went into Ohio and more than a dozen crashes with other vehicles.

Patrolman Danny Dolin of the Ripley Police Department said,] two masked men entered the bank, demanded money and displayed a weapon.

There were four employees, but no customers present. The men fled, ditched the car and jumped into a brown van they had hidden near a barn at Fairplains.

Someone called 911 when they made the switch, because they tried to do it so quickly. Patrolman Dolan said the eyewitness really helped catch the robbers.

The robbers headed north on Interstate 77 where a Wood County deputy spotted them near where the interstate meets U.S. 50. He pulled them over, but they again fled.

The chase then began in earnest, with the van hitting five or six other vehicles.

As the van traveled into Ohio it reportedly hit about a dozen more vehicles.

The men finally jumped from the van outside Marietta, Ohio, and police officers caught them in the woods.

Dolin said there were no injuries reported to him from the many people whose vehicles were struck.

Officers said they were both in their 50s.

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