In addition to cash, Kansas bank robber nabbed candy from VP’s desk, affidavit says
A woman got away with more than cash during a recent hold-up at a south-central Kansas bank.
She also nabbed sweets from the vice president’s desk.
That’s according to an affidavit supporting a federal criminal complaint charging 19-year-old Annali L. Vanarsdale of Wichita in the Dec. 6 robbery of the Carson Bank branch at 122 W. Main in Mulvane, southeast of Wichita. Vanarsdale was indicted Tuesday in U.S. District Court in the District of Kansas on one count of bank robbery, alleging she “by force, violence and intimidation” took money from the financial institution, where deposits are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC.
Specifically, the affidavit says Vanarsdale walked into the bank around noon dressed head-to-toe in black except for a blue face mask, “ordered everyone to put their hands up and began moving employees out of their work areas” into the main part of the bank.
She pulled a glass jar out of a backpack and demanded the bank vice president stuff it with cash, the document says.
As she waited, Vanarsdale “took two coffee mugs containing candy” from the vice president’s desk and put them in her backpack, the affidavit says.
The vice president told authorities she put money into the jar from a teller’s drawer, including five $20 “bait” bills with recorded serial numbers. She followed orders because she was afraid and “wanted this female out of the bank as soon as possible,” the affidavit says the vice president told authorities.
After the vice president handed over the jar, the robber put it back in the backpack and ran off.
But she didn’t get far.
Mulvane police alerted about the heist headed to the bank immediately.
The agency’s chief, Gordon Fell, who was the first on the scene and saw the robber leaving the bank, arrested Vanarsdale as she tried to get into an SUV that had stopped for the police officers who were chasing her, the affidavit says.
After her arrest, Vanarsdale admitted to a relative that she had robbed the bank, the affidavit says.
A police officer who looked in her backpack to check for weapons found the jar of cash containing $1,054.
The vice president’s coffee mugs and candy were next to it, the affidavit says.
Vanarsdale faces up to 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 if she is convicted of the bank robbery count. She remained in the Sedgwick County Jail on Tuesday and has a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at the federal courthouse in downtown Wichita, court records show.
