Armed Man Tries To Rob Base Bank Navy’s Trident Submarine Facility Targeted
A masked gunman tried to rob a bank on the Navy’s Trident nuclear submarine base on Hood Canal, then vanished empty-handed during a police standoff Wednesday morning.
The bank manager, accosted by the robber as she arrived for work, was released unharmed after a four-hour ordeal, said Leon Carroll, chief Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent at the base.
The manager’s husband is a civilian employee at the base.
“She’s a little shook up,” said Capt. Michael Landers, commanding officer. “We reunited her with her husband. She is not hurt.”
The robber was described as white, carrying a large-caliber semi-automatic handgun and wearing black boots, pants, shirt and hood or ski mask with camouflage or grease paint.
The base, about 20 miles west of Seattle, has a work force of about 10,000, about evenly divided between civilian and military personnel, and is one of two nationwide for the 560-foot-long submarines that pack some of the nation’s heaviest nuclear firepower.
Carroll gave the following account:
The woman was letting herself into the bank about 8:30 a.m., an hour before it was scheduled to open, when the man forced his way inside and ordered her to lie on the floor.
Unable to get money from the vault because the lock was on a time release, he began rifling through drawers in an apparent search for cash.
When he left the room, the woman remained on the floor of a teller cage and called in an alarm, staying on the phone with base security personnel as Navy security officers, FBI agents, Washington State Patrol troopers and Kitsap County sheriff’s officers surrounded the bank.
“She heard a couple of noises that made her suspicious that somebody must still be in the bank,” Chief Petty Officer Larry Coffey said.
Finally, around noon, a State Patrol special weapons and tactics squad entered the bank, found the woman on the floor and determined within about half an hour that she was the only one inside, said Paul Taylor, a base spokesman.
It was believed to be the most serious crime at the base since Shyam David Drizpaul, 23, a Navy technician, shot two others to death in his barracks, killed a woman and wounded a man in a pawnshop robbery in Bremerton and then committed suicide at a motel near Vancouver, Wash., in January 1990.
“It has been a long time since we’ve had any kind of serious crime at all,” Taylor said.
Access to the base is closely controlled, including the area where the bank is located. Guards check everyone arriving at the two main gates for a pass or badge, and civilians without regular clearance must be accompanied by an escort or sponsor from among the base personnel. Other gates are locked.