By Nathaniel Jones, Fort Worth Star Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)
RICHARDSON, Texas - Dashboard video cameras told the story of what Richardson police officers saw during a rolling gunbattle with bank robbery suspects.
On Friday, five Richardson officers, a Plano officer and two Richardson dispatchers involved in the Nov. 4 gunbattle with the so-called Takeover Bandits talked for the first time publicly about the chase during a news conference at Richardson City Hall.
Richardson police played video clips from the dashboard cameras of four of the city’s police cars that showed officers in pursuit, despite taking heavy gunfire from the suspects’ automatic weapons.
In one of the most dramatic clips, Richardson officer Bill Brown’s dash camera captured the seconds before the gunmen fired at him. A red Chevrolet Suburban can be seen backing up from an entrance ramp to Central Expressway when a gunman in the front passenger seat and a suspect in the back of the SUV fired multiple rounds at Brown. The suspect in the back shot through the truck’s back window.
“When I first realized that they were shooting at the squad, I ducked down to my right and could feel the impact of the rounds on the vehicle,” Brown said.
The bank robbery unfolded about 10:15 a.m. when members of the Takeover Bandits forced their way into the American First National Bank in a strip mall just east of Central Expressway, about two blocks north of the Richardson Police Department.
Wearing dark clothes and ski masks, the gunmen rushed into the bank, jumped over counters, grabbed cash drawers and entered the vault before leaving in a stolen Honda, police said. They parked the Honda on a nearby side street and got into the stolen Suburban. The SUV headed toward North Central Expressway, where the robbers noticed an unmarked Richardson police vehicle and fired at the off-duty officer, police said.
The Suburban exited at Plano Parkway and headed east into an industrial park. The suspects stopped the SUV and carjacked a pickup, police said. The suspects drove the truck east on Summit Avenue, where they ran a stoplight at Jupiter Road and crashed into other vehicles.
A second video clip showed the wreckage officers found when they arrived at Summit and Jupiter. Shortly after the officers’ arrival, the video shows several shots being fired, with bullets hitting the windshield clearly visible. After the crash, the suspects continued to shoot at police while running through a parking lot at a nearby strip mall. They carjacked another vehicle, a Hyundai, occupied by a woman and a child who escaped without serious injury. The robbers could not maneuver out of the parking lot, police said, so they carjacked a Mazda and headed east.
The robbers left the Mazda in Wylie and stole another Honda there.
Richardson Police Chief Larry Zacharias said the officers showed professionalism and a willingness to bring the suspects to justice without endangering lives.
“They made good solid decisions in a very heated intense moment,” Zacharias said. “There were no cowboy decisions made that got anybody hurt. They took a lot into consideration when they made those decisions.”