SUSPECTS CAUGHT IN ROBBERY 4 MEN, 1 WOMAN ARRESTED AFTER DEPUTIES BOX IN CAR.

Byline: Greg Botonis Staff Writer

MOJAVE - Five people suspected of a takeover-style robbery of a Mojave bank were arrested Wednesday after law enforcement officers cornered their car on a Highway 14 overpass, officials said.

The four men and one woman gave up after a Kern County sheriff's deputyfired at their car, thinking that two of the occupants were reaching for weapons, a department spokesman said.

``When the suspects got out of the car, money was falling out of their pockets,'' said Kern County Sheriff's Department spokesman Sgt. Chevy Garza.

Arrested were Jessie Lee Stringer, 25, of Lancaster; Mallory Brown, 22, of Palmdale; Arvin Carmen, 27, of Los Angeles; Antonio Thomas, 22, of Los Angeles; and Shuneaka English, 24, of Lancaster. No weapons were found.

The robbery occurred about 9:40 a.m. Wednesday at the Mojave Desert Bank. Sheriff's deputies were at the bank in less than three minutes and were told that four men entered the bank and ordered everyone to the ground. The robbers, holding their hands in their pockets as if they had guns, demanded that tellers hand over their money.

A witness told deputies the four jumped into an gray, older-model, four-door Ford Crown Victoria, which another witness reported seeing heading onto the southbound Highway 14.

Seconds later, a Rosamond sheriff's deputy traveling north heard the call and pulled onto the overpass at Backus Road to watch for the vehicle. He spotted a vehicle matching the description pass southbound on the freeway but it was driven by a young woman and he could not see the four men in the car.

The deputy followed the car anyway and when he attempted to pull it over, the driver instead sped up, officials said.

At Dawn Road, the Ford exited at an off-ramp and stopped momentarily at the top, where Kern County sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers had converged, trying to block the vehicle in.

A Rosamond deputy drew his gun and ordered the occupants out of the vehicle, Garza said, but the driver and a passenger both reached toward the floor as the car began moving forward.

Fearing that they might be reaching for weapons, the deputy fired a single shot that hit the car's bumper area, Garza said.

At that point, the driver stopped the car and the occupants did what the deputies told them, he said.

When the car was searched, investigators found large amounts of money on the floor of the front passenger's seat and on the back seat.

``They were all taken to a Kern County jail until the FBI can arrange the indictments and then they will be federally prosecuted,'' Garza said.

No one was injured in the robbery or the arrest, officials said.