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Home TownsManteca Bank Robbery Standoff |
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| In case you wonder why we are moving; here is a good reason: |
In the morning of September 4, 2009, two men armed with a hand gun robbed the Bank of America in Manteca and got away with a duffle bag of money.
But only two blocks away from the bank, they got cornered by two motorcycle officers. This happened in our street!
 It so happened that the two robbers then barricaded themselves in a house just across the street from us and Volker, working from home got a front row seat for the following twelve-hour standoff, involving 45 police officers , a SWAT team, 5 different county, state and federal agencies, 17 canisters of tear gas, a dog and our camera. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXManteca's Bank of America |
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Here is a detailed newspaper article on
the standoff.
And here is our own report: With one exception, Volker took all the pictures himselfe from a safe location with a really good zoom
lens. |
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| 11:00 AM Police arrives at the scene. |
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| 12:00 The bomb squad uses a remote controlled vehicle for recognizance. |
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| 1:00 PM S.W.A.T. gets in position. |
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| 3:00 PM After negotiation failed, the first of many tear gas canisters are deployed. |
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| 3:30 PM The first suspect is smoked out and arrested. |
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| 4:00 PM The second, armed suspect still remains inside, even after the deployment of more tear gas. Since the situation seemed to become more dangerous, we retreated to a safer position behind the police roadblocks. The standoff continued until almost midnight. |
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| 11:30 PM Finally, the second suspect was apprehended - chased out of the house by a courageous dog named "Gage" (picture curtesy of Manteca Bulletin). At midnight, we were allowed back into the street. The scene was a mess, but at least nobody was hurt and justice was served. |
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After everything calmed down, the police took a well deserved rest and CERT was left with cleanup duty. We are both members of CERT, the
Community Emergency Response Team. Click
here if you want to find out more about this volunteer organization.
We went to bed at about 4AM and sure had enough excitement for one day!
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The Day AfterAnd it wasn't over after that! The next two days, every news crew between Modesto and Sacramento paid a visit to Manteca's Lincoln Avenue. We had a news van parked in our driveway and our street and our house made the evening news in several channels.
But what was more important: The community really came together to help the two families that got literally smoked
out of their homes. All their personal belongings were rendered useless by the tear gas, but the community really
stepped up. The police department collected money. The S.W.A.T. team is not liable for damages, but they wrote a check,
coming out of their own pockets. Throughout the weekend, donations of furniture, cloth and toys kept coming - it was
a really touching scene and probably the best that could come out off the standoff.
Click the Manteca Bulletin below for an article on the community donations.
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| News Van in our driveway |
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| The donations keep coming | CERT is helping too | Our house in the evening news |
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