The Associated Press
MADISON, Neb. (AP) -- A fourth suspect on trial for the deadly Norfolk, Neb. bank shootings said he turned himself in to police after seeing his girlfriend’s picture on television, a police investigator testified Thursday.
Norfolk Police Detective Donnie Thorson testified that he interviewed Gabriel Rodriguez shortly after midnight on Sept. 27, 2002 -- nearly a day after four employees and one customer were shot to death in a U.S. Bank branch in Norfolk.
Rodriguez is accused of casing the bank before three others went in and shot the five people. He also is suspected of being the planned getaway driver.
Thorson read a portion of a transcript of the interview during the Madison County District Court trial Thursday.
“I only turned myself in because I saw my girl on television,” Thorson quoted Rodriguez as saying. “I don’t need that (expletive).”
Thorson said Rodriguez claimed he had gone in the bank asking about opening a savings account for his girlfriend, whom he said owed money on a closed account.
Thorson also said Rodriguez insisted he didn’t know his half brother, Jose Sandoval -- one of three gunmen already convicted of five counts of first-degree murder -- was capable of the shootings.
A Norfolk man also testified Thursday that he called police about a blue Cadillac he’d seen parked near a U.S. Bank branch before the shootings.
Johnny Max said he saw the dark blue Cadillac more than a week before the shootings. He identified the car in a picture as Rodriguez’s.
“I just saw this vehicle that was on its haunches, lurking there,” he said. “I just saw a vehicle I felt didn’t belong.”
Max said he went by the bank on the way to work every morning and noticed the car once parked twice across the street from the bank and once just north of the bank.
Each time, the car faced the bank, Max said, so he called the Norfolk police to report what he’d seen.
“They told me until they did something wrong, it was just my suspicious nature,” Max said.
An employee at Behavioral Health Services said she saw Rodriguez the morning of the killings standing by a blue Cadillac she thought was a co-worker’s.
Before Thursday’s hearing began, District Court Judge Robert Ensz removed a man from the jury after Madison County Attorney Joe Smith reported that the jurist’s mother had called Norfolk police. The woman said her son couldn’t hear the case, because his uncle is married to a witness’ mother.