Winter Park bank hit by silent robber

The tellers at TD Bank expected another normal transaction when the stranger in sunglasses stepped up to the counter on Saturday afternoon. It was one of final customers of the day; they’d be closing down in less than 20 minutes when the clock struck 3 p.m.

But instead of a deposit slip the silent man handed over a handwritten note. A note demanding money – and threatening that he carried a weapon.

Winter Park Police are in search of a bank robber on the run who quietly hit the TD Bank at Orange Avenue and Denning Drive at 2:41 p.m. on Saturday, July 5.

The suspect walked away with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Surveillance footage showed the suspect as a light-skinned male with a goatee wearing sunglasses, a black button down shirt and a beige baseball cap.

No one was hurt during the robbery.

“That’s the trend that we’ve been seeing now; it’s no longer where they go in guns blazing,” Sgt. John Bologna said. “What we’ve seen, even throughout Orange County and other areas, is they’re very subdued. They go in, they don’t look up, they keep their head down … they don’t want to bring attention to themselves.”

A similar bank robbery occurred at a Bank of America location in Winter Park last October. Before that incident, Winter Park hadn’t seen a bank robbery since April of 2011 when suspect Quinton Wilmer Jay Walker robbed a different Bank of America location.

Records kept by the FBI show that there were 5,015 bank robberies in the U.S. in 2011, through that number indicates a declining trend. The FBI recorded 5,546 bank robberies in 2010.