BANK CAMERAS SHOW SUSPECTS SOUGHT BY FBI.

Byline: Bhavna Mistry Daily News Staff Writer

The FBI has released surveillance-camera photos of a masked man who succeeded and a woman who failed in recent bank robbery attempts.

Great Western Bank officials are offering a reward of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the masked man who robbed their branch at 1261 W. Avenue P in the Antelope Valley Mall and took a hostage April 8.

A surveillance photo shows his appearance from the shoulders down.

Authorities said he wore a camouflage suit and blue high-top tennis shoes along with the blue ski mask, and he carried both a handgun and a shotgun or a rifle.

He ordered everyone onto the floor and grabbed a woman's purse, which he threw to a teller with a demand to fill it with cash, officials said.

Still demanding cash, he also walked behind the counter, FBI Agent Charles Empey said.

The robber forced a hostage - the woman whose purse he had taken and whom he hit in the head - to take him to her car and drive him a short distance in the mall parking lot, authorities said. Then he escaped on foot into a storm drain.

The man was described as a male African-American in his 30s, 6 feet to 6 feet 2 and 175 to 185 pounds, with dark brown eyes. He bore a tattoo of a red heart on the right side of his neck.

That was the second robbery of a Great Western Bank in the Antelope Valley within two weeks, authorities said - with an attempted robbery of one in between.

A Great Western Bank inside a Lucky's grocery store at 2535 E. Ave. S was robbed March 25 when a man approached the teller, handed her a note and left with more than $1,000.

Two days later, a young woman approached a teller inside the store and handed her a similar note. But the teller only laughed at her, and the would-be robber left.

Empey said authorities suspect a link between the man who robbed the bank at Lucky's and the woman who attempted to do so.

``We have reason to believe that the robberies at the same place are related,'' said Empey. ``The M.O. is similar.''

Anyone with information about any of these robberies is asked to call the FBI Lancaster Resident Agency at [phone] or the Lancaster Sheriff's Station Crime Tip Hotline at (805) 948-COPS.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) A photo shows the build of a masked, armed bank robber who took a hostage April 8 in Lancaster.

(2) A woman attempts to rob a bank by handing the teller a note.