Security camera helps nab robbery suspect

A security camera at a downtown Spokane department store helped lead to the arrest of a suspect in a bank robbery carried out two weeks ago by a masked man who escaped on a bicycle.

The robber who held up Inland Northwest Bank, 421 W. Riverside, on July 21 escaped with $781 after displaying a silver handgun to a teller, according to court documents filed Monday following the arrest of Patrick John Bacon.

The robber, wearing a turquoise ski mask, escaped on a bicycle after the noon-hour holdup.

Two days later, the court documents say, a store security officer at Bon-Macy’s in downtown Spokane contacted FBI agents and told them a bicycle and a bag had been found by an employee near the store’s Dumpster, near an alley entrance.

After the discovery, the store security officer reviewed a surveillance camera tape and spotted the robbery suspect dumping the bicycle and changing clothes in the downtown alley, the court documents disclose.

“Moments later, the white male walks out from behind the Dumpster wearing what appears to be a business suit,” said a court affidavit filed by FBI agent Stanley Meador.

Another store security camera captured the man in the suit entering the Bon-Macy’s store immediately after the robbery, while police scoured downtown streets for the masked bicycle bandit.

The FBI agent and the store security officer also reviewed security tapes made the evening and morning before the robbery. On those tapes, the same suspect is seen wearing the same suit and placing a black briefcase on the ground behind the Dumpster, Meador said in the affidavit.

The individual is then seen leaving the Dumpster area on his bicycle, carrying what appears to be the same white bag that was found after the robbery, containing the suspect’s clothes, the affidavit said.

On Friday, as the FBI agent was parking his bureau car on Riverside, he spotted the man he thought was the same suspect.

The agent followed the man to another downtown bank and learned he had just cashed a check.

With the suspect’s identity and a computer check, the agent learned the suspect had been released without bond after being charged with two bank robberies in Billings, Mont., last December.

Bacon was then arrested and questioned by FBI agents.

The 20-year-old suspect was ordered held without bond after an initial appearance Monday before Senior U.S. District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush.