MEEKER I “He looked like a regular customer,” Mountain Valley Bank president Tawny Halandras said in reference to Jock Waylon Thacker, who was arrested April 12 and is being charged with robbery and theft of the local bank.
Thacker appeared in court Friday, where he was denied a personal recognizance bond and is being held in Rio Blanco County jail on $10,000 bond. Last Thursday’s robbery is only the second bank robbery in Meeker history, the first one occurred in 1896.
“It played out how it should have, everybody is safe, no employees or customers were hurt and he (Thacker) was caught,” Halandras said..
Halandras said the protocol for any bank is “employee and customer safety first” and that the teller who received a note from Thacker, which was later found in a trash can, did just as tellers are trained.
“There was no scene, the teller did just what they are supposed to do and treated it as a normal transaction and got the person out of the bank,” she said. The teller’s name has not been released. “It was a quick transaction, he left with the cash and everybody was pretty calm. We secured the premises, made sure everyone was safe, contacted the police and then trusted them to do their job, which they did. They went to work immediately and the guy was apprehended.”
There were no other customers in the bank at the time of the robbery.
According to Halandras, Thacker walked through the front door of the bank just minutes after the lobby opened at 9 a.m. and left through the same door he entered.
A reverse 911 call was issued at approximately 9:40 a.m. The recorded message said the bank had been robbed and described the suspect as a white male, approximately 25 years old with brown curly hair, wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and spurs. The recording said to contact authorities but not to approach the suspect.
At approximately 9:45 a.m., Meeker resident Tom George called authorities about a suspicious person near Cole Trucking, south of the Rustic Lodge, where Thacker had been renting a cabin for approximately a month.
“My wife had called me about the robbery just a few minutes before,” George said. “I had Mike Joos’ (RBC undersheriff) number and called him with the description. The kid was just wandering around our yard (Cole Trucking) and looked lost, not sure of what he was going to do next. He walked towards the river then back towards the Rustic. Mike told me just to keep an eye on him.”
George said Thacker was wearing a green sweater with black stripes when he first saw him and as George walked north towards the Rustic Lodge, with Joos still on the phone, he spotted the suspect again, this time dressed in a red shirt and red “ball cap.”
“When I saw him again, he was in a red shirt and crossing Sulphur Creek,” George said. “He saw me and started running towards the river. I started running after him towards the river and, man, I’m out of shape.”
George said when Meeker police Lt. Phil Stubblefield arrived, Thacker was crossing the White River and Stubblefield joined other law officers, including Meeker Chief of Police Bob Hervey, at Circle Park.
Hervey said Stubblefield made the apprehension and that Thacker surrendered peacefully.
“We’re still 2-0 in bank robberies,” Hervey said. “Nobody has gotten away with it yet.”
According to court records, a cowboy hat fitting the description and a note written on the back of a receipt from Jackson’s Office Supply were later found in a trash can on Main Street. According to a police department affidavit, the note read: “Don’t be crazy take the money out of your register and place it on the counter and no one gets hurt.”
According to the affidavit, $1,278 was found in one of Thacker’s front jean pockets and a single dollar bill in the other.
According to a former classmate, Thacker attended Barone Middle School and possibly one year of high school in Meeker before returning to his home state of Louisiana. Thacker was unemployed, according to court documents.
He will be arraigned April 27, 2012.
George Bain (aliases George Low and George Harvies), along with Jim Shirley and “The Kid” Pierce were involved in Meeker’s first bank robbery. The trio rode into Meeker on horseback Oct. 13, 1896, and robbed the First National Bank at gunpoint. The robbers left the bank with hostages but all three criminals were gunned down by locals as they attempted to escape. The money bag was later found inside the bank.
The three robbers are buried in Highland Cemetery in Meeker, ironically, that was the same direction Thacker was headed when he was apprehended.
