A witness to last Friday’s bank robbery in Bryan says the same suspect robbed her at gunpoint in a holdup four years ago.
An employee of the First Victoria Bank branch on East 29th told Bryan police 61 year old James Kyle Graham pointed a long barreled pistol at her when she was a teller at the former Guaranty Bank on South Texas. Detectives asked that Graham’s arrest bond be a minimum $250,000 dollars. Bond was set at $300,000.
The manager at First Victoria says Graham threatened to detonate a small zip-up binder containing six wrapped packages of a purple substance connected by electric wires. She says Graham also pointed a handgun at her and a second employee, then she went into the vault and placed bundles of money into a black canvas bag.
Less than 15 minutes later, a highway patrolman spotted Graham’s pickup near Copperfield and Boonville. Graham parked his truck at a convenience store and was arrested without incident.
For more than three hours, Copperfield was closed from Boonville to Tiffany Park. The College Station bomb squad determined what the arrest report calls a “hoax bomb” used a playdoh substance. And the handgun was a concrete nail gun with a handle taped to it.
All the cash taken from First Victoria Bank was recovered.