Parma Heights/Parma Bank Robbers Arrested
In 2014, Parma Heights was named one of the safest cities in Ohio by SafeWise, in part because of our city’s unique safety initiatives and security programs. Those safety efforts paid off this last month as a robbery ring operating was quickly brought to justice once they acted in our city. On July 13, 2015, the Parma Heights Fifth Third Bank was robbed by a single armed male and on July 17, 2015, the Parma Heights Citizen Bank was robbed, also by a single armed male. The suspect and an accomplice, a female, were quickly captured on Sunday, July 19, and their arraignment scheduled for July 20, 2015. It was later discovered this same team had participated in a bank robbery in Parma on June 26, 2015.
Public safety is a critical marker of the quality of life in a community and I have continually said that safety is, and always will be, my top priority. Criminals will always be at work. What, as a city, we can control is the quickness of our response time, how solid our detective work is, how effectively we cooperate with other law enforcement agencies, and how swiftly an arrest is made. Our uniform patrol and detective bureau, along with agents from the FBI, performed at the highest level to bring this episode to a quick end.
SafeWise noted that Ohio’s safest cities are “brimming with civically-minded residents who clearly take pride in where they live.” This also turned out to be a factor in the quick arrests. Parma Heights Police Chief Daniel Teel reported to me that a witness at the scene of the July 17 robbery observed the events transpiring and secured the vehicle license plate number. The same witness then followed the suspect vehicle at a safe distance and observed the dye pack explode. A motorist found the dye pack at Huffman and Beverly and reported it to the Parma Heights Police Department.
Over the next 48 hours, Parma Heights investigators and FBI agents secured and executed search warrants on the suspects and their cell phone records. The resulting searches led to recovery of evidence linking the female to a robbery by two masked men of a Parma Charter One Bank on June 26. Similarly, the Parma Heights Detective Bureau and the FBI conducted a covert surveillance operation that led to the arrest of both the female and the male suspects and the seizure of the vehicle used in the Citizen Bank robbery. Evidence recovered from the vehicle included cash, drugs, dye stains, and clothes used in the robberies. To wrap things up, interrogations resulted in confessions from both the male and female along with information on another male involved in the Parma bank robbery on June 26.
A great job by our Police Department resulting in bank robbers taken off the streets, not just in our city, but from the streets of Parma, as well!