Police arrested a 62-year-old man on suspicion of carrying out three bank robberies in about an hour in Temecula and Murrieta.
The man, Sonny Tho Leu, was detained by police in Murrieta after they stopped his vehicle.
According to the Riverside County Sheriff's Office, the first of the robberies occurred Tuesday morning at a bank on Margarita Road in Temecula.
When officers arrived at the bank at 11:51 a.m., employees told them that a man had passed a teller a note demanding money. The teller complied and the man left with an undisclosed sum of money.
Bank employees said he was wearing a blue shirt and baseball cap and was carrying an orange bag.
While deputies were at the bank questioning people, they learned that a person with the same description had just carried out two bank robberies in Murrieta “using the same method,” the Sheriff's Office said in a news release.
At 12:19 p.m., just 28 minutes after officers arrived at the Temecula bank, the Murrieta Police Department received a call about an armed robbery at a bank on California Oaks Road.
A bank employee told police that the man, who was wearing a black baseball cap and carrying an orange bag, had handed over a note demanding money while displaying a gun in his waistband.
Once again, a teller handed him the money and the man fled.
At 12:58 p.m., while officers and detectives were in the area searching for the man, another call came in after a robbery at a bank on Hancock Avenue in Murrieta.
This time too, a bank employee handed him an undisclosed amount of money and the man left.
Authorities soon identified the vehicle and shared the details over police radio.
Officers stopped the car when the suspect pulled into the driveway of a home in Murrieta.
Murrieta police said a search of the vehicle found evidence of the robberies and Leu was identified as the suspect in all three robberies.
He was jailed on suspicion of bank robbery and criminal threats.
