A federal grand jury indicted a Mount Vernon man Tuesday on a charge that he robbed a Joplin bank on June 18.
Wesley C. Osborne Jr., 35, who lived in both Joplin and Mount Vernon in recent months, was charged with robbing the United Missouri Bank branch at 2106 S. Maiden Lane in an indictment handed up in U.S. District Court in Springfield.
According to a probable-cause affidavit written by an FBI agent, a man wearing a blue bandanna on his head walked into the bank and handed a teller a note demanding money. The robber then jumped over the bank counter and ordered all employees down on the floor before grabbing cash from a drawer and leaving the bank.
Osborne was arrested on June 19 at the Downstream Casino Hotel in Oklahoma for an alleged assault on a woman who had checked into the hotel in his company. While he was still in custody at the Ottawa County Jail, investigators received an anonymous call identifying Osborne as the bank robber.
An interview of the suspect at the jail led to his arrest in the bank robbery. The affidavit filed in federal court stated that Osborne had a bill in his possession at the time of the arrest that matched the serial number of a bait bill taken in the robbery, and that he correctly identified the location where investigators recovered the bandanna and a T-shirt he was wearing and had discarded about a block from the bank.
The defendant remains in federal custody pending the next hearing in his case.
Crime & Courts
U.S. grand jury indicts area man in bank robbery
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