Bandits steal ATM from Silverwood

There was a gun-toting robber. There was a train depot.

But it was neither the Old West nor some new amusement when a security guard at Silverwood Theme Park was forced into the depot at gunpoint and bound with duct tape as two men used the guard’s golf-cart-type utility vehicle to steal an ATM from the park early Thursday morning.

The cash machine is believed to have contained as much as $5,000.

According to Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department reports, Silverwood security guard Kevin Lunsford called deputies at 3:45 a.m. to report the robbery. He told deputies he had been making his rounds of the amusement park and had just checked the restaurant when a man approached him from behind, pointed a gun at him and ordered him to put his hands up.

Lunsford said the man was wearing a black shirt, camouflage pants and had his face painted in camouflage.

The man forced Lunsford to walk to the train depot where a second man came out and helped the first wrap Lunsford’s ankles and wrists with duct tape. The men took Lunsford’s pager, radio and park-owned cell phone, but they did not find his pocket knife or personal cell phone, he told deputies.

Lunsford heard the men moving a “heavy object” he said, and one of the robbers asked Lunsford how to start the flat-bed ATV he uses on his rounds. An ATM in the train depot was missing.

Deputies found the flatbed vehicle on a gravel road northeast of Silverwood with tire tracks from a larger vehicle next to it. A pistol and a flashlight were found in the bed of the vehicle.