A professional caregiver who was doing some personal banking during an alleged robbery said her career training kicked in when a man entered the credit union and started behaving oddly.
Dustin Aaron Clark, 36, is on trial in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench on charges arising from an alleged robbery at the Taylor Plaza Servus Credit Union in Red Deer on Sept. 13, 2012.
Jan Broderick, 62, testified on Wednesday that she had just finished work late that afternoon and was chatting with a teller while paying some bills.
A man wearing a black hoodie walked up behind her and then moved to the unoccupied teller’s wicket to her immediate left, said Broderick.
Glancing at him as he stood there, she said he had the hood pulled over his head, so she couldn’t see above the bridge of his nose.
When one of the bank staff advised him that another teller was available to help him he said he would just wait there.
Broderick told Crown prosecutor Jillian Brown that she became concerned when she saw another teller moving cash from her top drawer to her bottom drawer and noticed the way bank staff were looking at each other.
“It got very quiet in the bank,” the small, slightly built woman told Crown prosecutor Jillian Brown.
It was at that point, said Broderick, that she realized there could be trouble brewing and she started to think about an escape plan.
Broderick said she was careful not to look directly at him because she had been trained to avoid eye contact with people who may be volatile.
The man stood there for a moment longer, and then moved a few feet further left to the wheelchair accessible teller.
She could hear him speaking, but did not hear what he said.
She then saw him stick something that looked like a bundle of cash into the right pocket of his hoodie, but had turned and was looking toward the teller when he left the building.
Under cross-examination by Edmonton defence lawyer Lionel Chartrand, the woman admitted that she had trouble picking Clark’s face out of a photo gallery presented to her by police investigating the incident.
She said he had a big nose and big lips, but that the features she had noticed were difficult to pick out in the photo line-up because she had seen him only in profile and the people in the photo line-up were all facing forward.
Crown witness Jennifer Caswell said she had been asked by police to confirm the identity of a man they called “Lips.”
Caswell said she had been living temporarily in a motel at the north end of the city and knew who he was from seeing him in the parking lot, but did not know him personally. Caswell also had some difficulty picking Clark out of the photo line-up, stating that he was younger and chubbier in the photos.
The trial continues today.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com