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Seattle Police are looking for a bank robbery suspect in the University District and may have cornered him in the Health Sciences building.

According to police, the man walked into a bank in the 1300 block of 45th ave NE at about 1:15 this afternoon and implied he had a weapon.

Police were called and have apparently chased the robber into the Health Science building’s BB tower. Employees have been instructed to lock themselves in their offices and elevators in the building have been shut down.

An emergency alert from the University of Washington describes the suspect as an Asian male in an orange hat.

Another similar robbery took place in the University District on December 5th when a man in his 40s walked into a bank and implied he had a weapon. Bank tellers slipped the man a dye pack and the robber apparently ditched the cash on the street before he fled on a Metro bus.

This email came in shortly afterward:

Tonight, when my bus in the U-District pulled up to the stop across from Wells Fargo and Schmitz Hall. Strange reddish smoke filled the air, and cash lay around on the sidewalk. But the driver opened the door and took riders, and continued around the corner to the next stop on Campus Parkway. All the riders were gagging and confused — I went up front, and said “dude, you need to call this in to Metro don’t you think?” to the driver.

I got off the bus, and the cops showed up just like that. It turns out there had been a bank robbery, and the robbers had dropped the money case, which explodes with poisonous gasses, dye, and smoke when tampered with, at the busy bus stop.

The bus driver accepted more passengers, and I went back on and said, “dude, shouldn’t we be getting people OFF the bus?” at which point I noticed that the next 73 downtown Express was pulling up behind us. The cops, who had sauntered up to the scene by now, weren’t helping. I said, “hey, tell the people to get off the bus. The next 73 is right there…”

It was a “WAKE UP, SEATTLE” kind of moment.

The two robberies do not appear to be related.

UPDATE: Staff at the Health Sciences building have been told it’s safe to unlock their doors. It’s unclear whether police have arrested anyone.

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee: Proving you wrong since 1983.

19 replies on “Police Searching For Bank Robbery Suspect in University District”

  5. I actually love this driver. If it were the other way around and we had to park and wait for metro police and/or fill out incident reports I would have been so fucking done.

    “But the driver opened the door and took riders, and continued around the corner to the next stop on Campus Parkway.”

  13. elswinger:

    “The emergency alert was posted on the UW Web site and sent as a text message to about 11,600 people who signed up for emergency alerts. Text messages were also sent to about 5,600 on a university housing and food service list, university spokesman Bob Roseth said.

    E-mail alerts were also sent to an unspecified number of administrators, he said.”

    (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seatt…)

    So it sounds like only certain people got the email alerts.

  16. @award winning

    Yeah, Text message alerts. Too bad there are whole portions of campus (basement labs, old brick buildings) that do not have reliable cell phone coverage.

  19. i was in the basement hall of the bb tower at 3:15 and i saw a hispanic-asian looking kid in a dark jacket looking shifty (but without the white pants and orange hat) and my gut reaction was to call the feds and send him packing to camp x-ray but he got on a supply elevator and got away 🙁

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