MONROVIA - Someone may have tricked an apparently mentally disabled man into trying to rob a bank Wednesday, police said.
The incident resulted in a standoff that lasted more than three hours, forced the evacuation of about 400 people from nearby offices and led to police closing Myrtle Avenue from Huntington Drive to the 210 Freeway, officers said.
"He's limited intellectually," Monrovia police Lt. Michael Lee said of the 24-year-old, who was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rob a bank in the early afternoon. "I'm not necessarily sure that he isn't a bit of a victim himself."
A few minutes before the Citizens Business Bank was scheduled to open at 10 a.m., a man entered the lobby of the bank's office building and slipped a note under the locked bank door threatening to ignite a bomb if the staff did not give him money, Monrovia spokesman Dick Singer said.
Bank employees called police, who evacuated the office building, surrounding buildings and nearby Mt. Sierra College.
After a standoff at the site at Myrtle and Huntington, the man emerged from the lobby at 1:35 p.m. wearing only his underwear after police forced him to disrobe as a precaution. No bomb was found.
While in custody, the man told police he was picked up by a stranger at a day laborer center in Sierra Madre to do some painting.
"His story is that (the stranger) gave him a note and said ... tell them they need to put the money in this bag and come see me," Lee said. "The wrongness of that never struck him."
Though the man appeared to be genuinely disabled intellectually, Lee said police hadn't ruled out the possibility he was lying.
"It's entirely possible to that he is putting on a great show," the lieutenant said.
Lee said police had gathered some information about the person the suspect said picked him up, but declined to release it pending further investigation.
Police had not found a family member or anyone who appeared to be responsible for the man Wednesday afternoon.
John Luce, a supervisor at Pinnacle Art Department, which is upstairs from the bank, was the last evacuee Wednesday.
"It was probably one of the scariest moments I've had in a long, long time," he said
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