Car chase, gunfight kill two after bank robbery

STOCKTON, Calif. -- Cars and houses were riddled with bullets during a high-speed chase, and hostages were thrown from a fleeing sport utility vehicle after a bank robbery Wednesday that led to the deaths of a hostage and two of the robbery suspects, police said.

The violence began at 2 p.m. when officers responded to a call of a robbery at a Bank of the West branch in north Stockton. Arriving officers spotted three men walking three female hostages from the bank. The robbers hijacked a bank employee’s SUV and a pursuit started, Stockton police officer Joe Silva said.

During the chase that lasted 45 minutes and spanned several miles, one of the hostages was thrown from the SUV and was taken to a hospital with a gunshot wound, Silva said. The pursuit continued as gunfire from the SUV continued, he said. Police cars and homes along the robbers’ path were peppered with gunshots.

“In my 18 years of law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like this in the city of Stockton,” Silva said, adding that no officers were injured.

A second hostage was later thrown from the vehicle, and officers tending to her found she had been grazed by a bullet, Silva said.

As the SUV came to a stop, officers exchanged gunfire with someone inside the vehicle. When it was all over, a hostage and one of the robbers were dead, Silva said. Besides the first hostage thrown from the vehicle, at least two other robbery suspects were hospitalized, and one later died.

Witnesses said the shootout that brought the episode to a close looked like a war.

“It sounded like five minutes of straight gunfire,” witness Sam York told KCRA-TV. “It seemed like it wasn’t real.”

A Section on 07/17/2014

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