» Related Article: Robbery, Kidnapping Victim Tells of Ordeal
According to Prince George's County police, a female employee of the Sun Trust Bank at Elton Road and New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring left work Friday and was followed home by a pair of suspects. The woman arrived home around 7:30 p.m. at which point she was accosted by the two men, who threatened her with a gun and a knife and ordered her into the house.
The invaders tied up the two adults in the house, the woman and her husband, with electrical cords and held them all night.
Saturday morning, one suspect forced all four family members -- the bank employee, her husband, and two sons, 8 and 11-years-old -- into the family's car and made the woman's husband drive them to the bank.
They were apparently going to use her to facilitate a robbery of that branch prior to it opening at nine this morning," said Greg Shipley of Maryland State Police.
It was around 7:30 a.m. when the husband's erratic driving prompted Maryland State Trooper Barrington Cameron to stop the vehicle on the outer loop of the beltway near Route 1. Trooper Cameron saw someone in the back seat making furtive movements, and driver told him that the man in the back had a gun. Cameron drew his weapon and took the suspect into custody.
Police recovered a loaded semi-automatic pistol and a knife from the suspect.
Police then went to the family's home on the 6800 block of Briarcliff Drive in Clinton, where they believed the other suspect to be barricaded, and formed a police perimeter around 10:00 a.m. on Saturday.
"There were guys with guns and rifles all around the backyard and on the side of the house," described neighbor Ezzra Farrell. "And they asked us to stay low, go in the basement, don't get up," recalls another neighbor, Sherrone Martin.
Police discovered when they entered the home around 1:00 p.m. that the suspect had already left the home.
The true identity of the suspect in custody is unknown; he is an African-American male believed to be in his late teens or early twenties, but nothing else about him is known.
Police say that around 1:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon, a few hours after being taken into custody, the suspect used his shirt to attempt to hang himself in his cell. The duty officer at the College Park police barracks found him and he was transported to Prince George's Hospital still awake and alert.
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