Theft of ATM fails; 1 arrested
TEXARKANA, Texas — A Missouri City, Texas, man has been arrested in Texarkana for felony evading after an attempted ATM theft.
Reginald
Cole was arrested on the felony evading charge and could face more charges, according to the Texarkana Texas Police Department.
A witness called 911 about 4 a.m. Wednesday and reported seeing a truck backed up to an ATM at the TEXAR Federal Credit Union on Richmond Road. Officer Daniel Linn arrived a couple of minutes later and saw a silver car leaving the parking lot at high speed. The car immediately took off when Linn turned on his lights and siren.
During the short pursuit through the neighborhood behind the credit union, the driver — identified as Cole — suddenly stopped the car and several men jumped out and ran in different directions. The car then sped away with Linn still pursuing it.
Cole pulled over on Richmond Road and was taken into custody, according to police accounts. The other people who jumped out of the car have not been located yet.
Back at the credit union, police found a Ford truck with a chain attached to the bumper that had crashed through a fence. The truck was registered to someone in Marshall and had been stolen during the night.
The men were never able to get into the ATM, and they didn’t get away with any money. They did do thousands of dollars of damage to the ATM, officials report.
ATM heists and attempted heists have happened with some frequency over the last several years in Texarkana and other places. Some of those heists have been attributed to a sprawling criminal enterprise.
For example, in late August, two Houston men who robbed an ATM technician at gunpoint in Texarkana, Texas, in 2018, pleaded guilty to federal charges related to ATM robberies. They were among 27 reported gang members charged in a federal court in Sherman, Texas, earlier this year.
The Aug. 14, 2018, robbery of a BancorpSouth ATM in the parking lot of Legends Gym in Texarkana, Texas, is one of 47 strong-arm robberies linked to the Market Street Money Gang that occurred from August 2017 to January 2019 in Texas, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, Florida, Illinois and Tennessee, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas.
The thefts resulted in losses of more than $2.5 million, officials say.
Texarkana Texas Police Department officers identified two of the robbers with the help of the FBI and Houston police, according to a probable cause affidavit.