We’ve all contemplated what we would do if we were cornered by the police while committing a crime: run for it, blow our brains out, hang our head and submit quietly. On Monday morning, outside a Chase branch in downtown Los Angeles, a suspected bank robber appears have taken a different route altogether: the one where you go full Jordan Belfort, and toss the spoils of your crime, read: money, all around in your last precious moments of freedom.
Not surprisingly, the robber doesn’t look very jolly letting all that paper float into the street. Most people who engage in this grandiose behavior do so when they’ve just come into the windfall of a lifetime, and money no longer means anything to them. Instead, the robber looks kind of mad at the money.
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According to local news station KTLA, there was a film set nearby, so onlookers thought the whole thing was a scene coming soon to a theater near you.
But then, as LAPD spokesman Drake Madison told KTLA, “officers arrived and met with that suspect outside of the location, and less-than-lethal force was used to take him into custody.” By less-than-lethal force, he means a beanbag gun.
A bomb squad arrived shortly afterward to examine the suspect’s money suitcase, as he had reportedly claimed to have a bomb, and, according to ABC News, had demanded the weirdly specific sum of $250,000. Why name a specific number if you’re just planning to throw the money all over the sidewalk?
ABC had a news chopper in the air at the time, which gives us another angle from which to view the start of this guy’s career as a folk hero.
After the incident, the suspect was reportedly taken to the hospital with unknown injuries.
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