When Hillsborough, North Carolina police Capt. Dexter Davis asked a man acting suspiciously at a bank Monday afternoon whether he had a weapon, the man opened his backpack to let Davis see for himself.

What Davis saw made him want to laugh out loud — and got the man immediately arrested.

The story of how Davis and Sgt. Brad Whitted caught a man wanted for trying to rob a Central Carolina Bank branch in Durham began with a telephone call.

“About 4:30 p.m., we got a call in here that a suspicious person came into the BB&T Bank [in Hillsborough] and stayed about 15 minutes and left,” Davis said.

The man had entered the South Churton Street bank but never approached the tellers or conducted any bank business, Davis said.

Davis and Whitted drove to the bank, and as they approached, they saw a man walking toward the back of the bank with a backpack on. They parked in front and had just walked in the first set of doors, when the man came walking back out, Davis said.

“I asked him to step outside to see an identification,” Davis said. “He produced several cards that had his name on them.”

The man seemed nervous and asked why the officers had stopped him, Davis said.

“I asked if he had a weapon. He pulled his book bag off his shoulders. He opened the bag up and held it open to me,” Davis said. “I looked down, and there I saw a note that said, “I want $10,000 in $100 bills. Don’t push no buttons, or I’ll shot you.”

He didn’t know how to spell shoot, Davis noted.

Somehow, when the man swung the book bag around and opened it up, the note slipped into perfect position so that it was lying flat in the backpack and was easy to read when Davis looked inside.

“I thought, ‘What a dummy!’” Davis said. “I even showed it to Sgt. Whitted. I almost chuckled when I saw that note. I was looking for a weapon, but here was this note with nice large letters.”

Davis put the bag down and then put handcuffs on the man. When asked about the note, the man said, “It ain’t mine,” Davis said.

After putting the handcuffs on the man, Davis and Whitted were in for another surprise. “We patted him down and at that point, a butcher knife fell out of his britches,” Davis said.

The blade of the knife was at least 10 inches long and had a sharp point.

Davis and Whitted took the man back to the Hillsborough Police Department, where a detective contacted the Durham Police Department and the FBI. Hillsborough police did not charge the man with any crimes since he did not actually attempt to rob the bank in Hillsborough. They turned him over to the FBI agents.

Davis said that the man, identified as Christopher Alexander Fields, was driving a leased 2004 Buick LeSabre at the time of his arrest.

Durham charged Fields, 42, of 145 North St., Henderson, with attempting to rob the Central Carolina Bank at 3549 Hillsborough Road on Monday.

During that robbery attempt, the man entered the bank around 3.25 p.m. and handed a teller a note demanding a specific amount of money in specific denominations. When the teller told him she didn’t have the money in those denominations, he became angry and left the bank, according to the Durham Police Department.

Fields was the second man that Hillsborough has caught in connection with bank robberies in Durham.

Last month, Whitted spotted a man wanted for two bank robberies in Durham at a fast-food restaurant in Hillsborough and placed him under arrest. Durham police charged the man, Jason Calvin Kokkeler, 24, with robbing a bank and a credit union in Durham.

Story courtesy Beth Velliquette and The Herald-Sun

After days spent in cold, wet and foul-smelling darkness, a nearly naked escapee tumbled out of a trash bin Monday - and was promptly returned to a prison cell.

Nicholas Stillman, 41, escaped Friday from the Farmington Correctional Center, a medium-security complex about 70 miles south of St. Louis. Less than 72 hours later, he was captured in Ste. Genevieve County after what can hardly be described as a weekend of freedom.

Authorities never thought to search for Stillman in the garbage-compactor box, a giant trash bin used by the prison. And Stillman apparently never figured that - once hidden in the steel box - he would spend nearly three frigid days locked inside, half-submerged in sloppy scraps from the prison cafeteria.

Stillman started serving a five-year sentence for statutory rape in November after violating the conditions of his parole. Authorities say he tried two jailbreaks before in Illinois. His third time wasn’t exactly a charm.

Prison officials said he was last seen about 1 p.m. Friday, about the same time that a trash crew was loading the compactor box that they fill with prison trash four times each week. How Stillman got into the box is still a mystery, since prison guards are supposed to watch the garbage-loading closely.

The crew hauled the compactor box to the company’s transfer station in Ste. Genevieve County, said Sherry Wors, a truck dispatcher for Continental Waste Industries of Missouri Inc. She said the box was going to be dumped Friday afternoon, but workers were too busy with other jobs. The prison box could wait until Monday.

“It really is a blessing that we didn’t have time to dump it on Friday,” Wors said. “Otherwise, this guy would have been full of energy, and there wouldn’t have been anyone to stop him.”

As it turns out, Stillman didn’t have a lot of fight left in him when a trash crew found him Monday morning.

Wors said she and other workers at the transfer station had noticed something amiss about the compactor box. The steel door was closed tightly on Friday, but on Monday it was bent, as if someone had been beating on it from the inside. And there was an occasional thumping sound, although cats trapped inside usually make a similar noise, Wors said.

“We were talking about it, and somebody said, ‘That guy from Farmington is still missing,’” Wors said. “We were only joking, but, still, something didn’t feel right.”

The speculation was contagious, and a small crowd of workers gathered to watch the trash dumping about 9 a.m. If there was any surprise, Wors said, it was that Stillman was nearly naked and still alive.

Ste. Genevieve County Sheriff Gary L. Stolzer said he happened to be in the area and arrived on the scene about a minute after workers discovered the man wearing only his underwear and covered chest high in what Stolzer called “a greasy, bean-looking sludge.”

“He didn’t resist at all. At that point, I think he just wanted to be taken someplace warm,” Stolzer said. “He knew the game was up. He was in no condition to put up a fight.”

Sheriff’s deputies sorting through trash found a sweat suit soaked in soupy prison food. Stolzer suspects Stillman might have taken off the drenched clothes over the weekend in an attempt to stay dry and avoid hypothermia. Temperatures started falling early Sunday morning, reaching a low of 8 degrees early Monday.

Hours after his capture, Stillman was returned to the Farmington prison, where he was being treated for exposure.

The investigation into how Stillman pulled off the escape, and whether he had any accomplices, is continuing. Investigators still don’t know how he got out of his cell.

Story courtesy Matthew Hathaway and St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Clyde Lamar Pace II made two mistakes Thursday.

The first, Polk County sheriff’s deputies say, was when he emptied his pockets to pass through a courthouse metal detector and apparently forgot about the small bag of marijuana.

The second was when he ran the wrong way from deputies into a locked revolving door.

Pace, 18, was arrested for drug possession and resisting arrest. Thus, he missed a scheduled hearing on drug and driving charges that stemmed from a Dec. 7 traffic stop.

Courthouse officials noted that Pace’s was not the first very public attempt to bring drugs into the courthouse.

“It’s not an everyday occurrence,” Chief Deputy Bill Vaughn said. “It is comical to us.”

Pace’s trouble on Thursday stemmed from a security post at the courthouse’s south door.

For the past two years, all visitors have been required to empty their pockets before they pass through a metal director. Items such as pocket change and car keys are placed into a small plastic tray.

“He threw in a baggie of marijuana without realizing it, and the person working the security post said, “Hey, what is this?” ” Vaughn said. “He kind of gave that old I’ve-been-caught look, and the chase was on.”

Sheriff’s officials say Pace first tried to retrace his steps, then ran the length of the building before he was stopped by deputies at a locked north door.

Pace’s lawyer, Bob Rigg, arrived in court shortly after the incident to find people laughing.

The new charges will probably affect the previous possession case, Rigg said. “We just don’t know how much.”

A 46-year-old man armed with a tree branch robbed just over 1,000 euros (1,260 dollars) from a customer at a bank in suburban Lisbon, Portugal but was forcibly subdued by other bank clients before he could escape, it was reported.

The man pressed the branch against the back of the customer on Monday and shouted “This is a robbery!” before grabbing the cash which the bank client had just withdrawn, a police source told daily newspaper 24Horas.

But as the assailant attempted to flee, he was grabbed and beaten up by other bank clients who held him until police arrived, the paper said.

The would-be robber was taken to a hospital emergency ward for treatment to cuts and bruises.

Police said he would undergo psychological testing.

“The authorities are used to dealing with robberies involving guns. But they have never dealt with thieves trying to rob banks with branches before,” a police spokesman told daily newspaper Correio da Manha.

Three men who went streaking through a Spokane, Washington Denny’s restaurant were chilled and chagrined when they spotted a thief drive off in their getaway car, their clothes inside.

Naked in the 20-degree weather, the three young men huddled behind cars in a parking lot until police arrived.

“I don’t think they were hiding. I think they were just concealing themselves,” police spokesman Dick Cottam said.

The three entered the restaurant before daybreak Wednesday, wearing only shoes and hats. They left their car running so they could make a quick escape.

But the streakers watched through the windows as a man who had been eating inside the restaurant drove off in their car.

No charges were brought against the streakers.

“I think it was just three kids who decided to fool around,” Cottam said. He added: “We always tell people to not leave their car running.”

A Wood County man was arrested Wednesday in connection with a robbery at Community Bank on Emerson Avenue in which a bomb threat was used to force bank tellers to hand over money.

Eugene D. Golden, 36, of 2171 Meadowview Drive, Briarwood, was arrested after Parkersburg police located the vehicle they suspect was used in the 5:50 p.m. bank robbery, said Chief Robert Newell.

He was arraigned around 9:30 p.m. by Wood County Magistrate Joyce S. Purkey. Purkey set Golden’s bond at $50,000. Golden did not attempt to make bond Wednesday night.

Police said a suspect walked up to the drive-through at the bank wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a ball cap.

He taped a note to the window indicating an explosive device would be detonated if bank officials refused to comply with demands for money. There was nothing to indicate any other type of weapon was used, Newell said.

Bank employees complied with the note and handed over $21,066 in cash, Newell said. The suspect then fled in a green vehicle, but returned a short time later after realizing he left the note taped to the window.

Police Detectives Greg Nangle and Joe Martin said when the suspect returned, he parked his vehicle in the lot at Emerson Lanes behind the North End Market and walked back to the bank, at 3906 Emerson, to retrieve the note.

Upon arrival at the scene, Patrolman Blaine Ritchie saw a man walk up to the drive-through window and remove a note that had been taped there, police said. Ritchie instructed the man to stop, but he disobeyed the officer’s commands and ran to the rear of the bank and continued to the rear of the North End Market, officers said.

Patrolman K.L. Hornbeck chased the suspect down on foot and caught him behind North End Market, 3704 Emerson Ave. The suspect was attempting to get into a light green Daewoo Leganza and later was identified as Golden, Newell said.

Newell said the car Golden was caught trying to get into matched the description given by bank officials to police of the vehicle used in the alleged robbery. Detectives said the suspect had placed duct tape over the emblems on the vehicle to thwart attempts to identify it.

The suspect also placed a cardboard sign reading “lost tag” over the license plate, detectives said.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for the vehicle from magistrate court. After Golden was arrested, police had the vehicle towed to Parkersburg Fire Department’s Station 1 until the search warrant was executed, Newell said.

During the search, detectives recovered a brown bag full of money, along with clothing matching the description of what the suspect was wearing, from the trunk of the vehicle.

No bomb was found.

A twice-convicted drunken driver accused of stealing a dump truck in Stafford County told deputies he did it because he had to make a beer run.

Officers found Budweiser on the seat of the 1999 Ford F550 dump truck after stopping the driver Wednesday afternoon on Courthouse Road in front of Brooke Point High School, sheriff’s Capt. David Roderick said.

Culpeper resident Christopher Duane Walker, 33, of Clayhill Road in Lignum was charged with grand larceny, drunken driving, DUI as a second or third offense in 10 years, driving after being judged an habitual offender and driving on a revoked license, Roderick said.

Authorities were on the lookout for the dump truck after a construction worker flagged down Deputy J.B. Walker about 3 p.m.

The man said he’d left the work site on Ram Court off Brooke Road in his personal vehicle. On the way back, he saw his dump truck speeding past on Brooke Road, Roderick said.

The worker said he’d left the keys in the ashtray and the truck unlocked.

Walker broadcast a description of the truck and seconds later, deputies spotted it headed back toward the construction site.

Two men were inside the truck when the deputies stopped it right by the school.

Police learned the men were working on a deck right next to the construction site. They told deputies they ran out of beer and decided to take the truck to get some, Roderick said.

They did not have permission to take the dump truck, he said.

A computer check showed the man behind the wheel had been convicted of drunken driving in Culpeper County twice since 1994. He also had a revoked license and had been judged an habitual offender, meaning his driving privileges are permanently suspended in Virginia.

The man in the passenger seat, 33-year-old Albert Frasier of Spotsylvania County, was charged with public drunkenness, Roderick said.