Eight Feet Deep

Update: Police cleared Aurielle Tineo of charges she robbed this credit union and arrested another woman. Jen­nifer Sykes Dev­iller of Lake Charles, La., was arrested for the rob­bery dis­cussed here. Repeat: Auriell Tineo has NOT been charged with any crimes. It must really suck for Ms. Tineo being charged with such a crime. She still might want to make some changes on her My Space page. The jist of this post on the rar­ity of women bank rob­bers. Appar­ently, they are not so rare where I live.

Before I start, I have to first say that hav­ing a fas­ci­na­tion for a sub­ject doesn’t mean one has to con­done that subject.

I speak of bank rob­bery. It’s an odd crime and I am fas­ci­nated by the sub­ject. It is odd because the chances are so mea­ger for some­one to get away with hold­ing up a bank. FBI sta­tis­tics indi­cate that only mur­ders are cleared by arrest more often than bank rob­bery. Almost 60 per­cent of bank rob­beries are cleared com­pared to about 62 per­cent of mur­ders. Then, when you throw in the fact that only about 5 per­cent of bank rob­bers are female, you might see how some­one who is inter­ested in the crime of bank rob­bery from a soci­o­log­i­cal stand­point such as I, might be even more inter­ested in that rare bird, the woman bank rob­ber. True.

So when a young, rel­a­tively attrac­tive female was arrested yes­ter­day for the rob­bery of a small-town credit union in my area, I found myself ask­ing why? If this per­son indeed robbed this finan­cial insti­tu­tion was it because she likes drugs, as she admits on her My Space page and seems to be the motive given the judg­ment of the sher­iff whose jail now holds the young woman? Was it because, as famed bank rob­ber Willie Sut­ton was sup­posed to have said: “Because that’s where the money is?” Was it excite­ment, prod­ded by small-town bore­dom? Was she just nuts?

These are all ques­tions we won’t know, prob­a­bly, any­time soon. We don’t even know if she is the rob­ber. How­ever, she was fin­gered by a phone caller who saw a rob­ber fit­ting her descrip­tion on a video of the hold-up dur­ing a local TV news broad­cast.

Aurielle Tineo, 26, of Hamshire, Texas, is sus­pected of rob­bing the Texas Coastal Com­mer­cial Fed­eral Credit Union — some­one needs to look into abbre­vi­at­ing that name — in nearby Win­nie on Feb. 4. The linked video in the para­graph above shows a woman who held a pis­tol by the bar­rel while telling employ­ees to stuff money in a bag. Some of the still pic­tures in the news video, by Beau­mont TV sta­tion KFDM Chan­nel 6, also cap­ture a nice-looking young woman with some evi­dent quirks judg­ing by her dri­ver license photo. She admits to that quirk­i­ness on her My Space page.

“Auri the rene­gade angel,” as she calls her­self on the pop­u­lar social media page, claims to be “a witch” and notes that she likes “race­horses … guns, mar­i­juana …” as well as mak­ing her son laugh and watch­ing him sleep.  She said she likes “speed” but so much so she had to quit and no longer “f**ks with it.” As well she admits enjoy­ing shock­ing peo­ple to see the look on their faces. She might just be shock­ing some folks right now.

Although Tineo ram­bles on her My Space page, she isn’t alone in that respect, it is evi­dent from some of her state­ments that she is of aver­age or per­haps even above aver­age intel­li­gence. She is in that age range — from 18 to 30 — that FBI sta­tis­tics say most com­mit bank rob­beries. This is, even though, the aver­age yield on a forced with­drawal by armed rob­bery at a finan­cial insti­tu­tion is upon aver­age less than $5,000.

Tineo was just arrested. She is pre­sumed inno­cent like every­one else. Above all, I would point that out because police say some­one else is likely involved in the crime and when two play and are caught things can become all skewed in the legal process.

But if Aurielle Tineo, self-proclaimed witch, is con­victed then per­haps some under­stand­ing of her spe­cific rea­sons for com­mit­ting a crime with such lit­tle chance for suc­cess will come to light. Until then, we shall see how things play out in her case.

UPDATE2: In another press con­fer­ence about 8:30 p.m. Cen­tral, Fort Hood and the Army’s III Corps com­man­der told reporters that the sus­pect in the shoot­ing at the World’s largest mil­i­tary base on Thurs­day after­noon is not dead despite being shot mul­ti­ple times by a female civil­ian police offi­cer. Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said the sus­pect, Army psy­chi­a­trist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was in “sta­ble con­di­tion” and that  his death was not immi­nent despite being shot mul­ti­ple times. Hasan is report­edly a U.S. cit­i­zen of Jor­dan­ian her­itage who received his under­grad­u­ate degree at Vir­ginia Tech. Cone said evi­dence does not rule out ter­ror­ism, but there is no evi­dence to sug­gest the shoot­ings were terrorist-related. This is really going to help out the military’s men­tal health pro­gram at a time when sui­cides in the ser­vice are at an almost epi­demic level. Prozac any­one?

UPDATE: Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, com­mand­ing gen­eral of the III Army Corps and Fort Hood, said at a short press con­fer­ence that at least 12 peo­ple have been killed and 31 wounded in the shoot­ing. Both those shot and the sus­pects are sol­diers, Cone said.

As the hed said, media reports indi­cate per­haps nine peo­ple are dead and more than two dozen have been wounded in a shoot­ing involv­ing at least two sus­pects at Fort Hood, Texas. The mas­sive mil­i­tary post lies about halfway between Waco and Austin, right smack dab in the heart of Texas.

So this means what to me? Well, Ft. Hood was part of my beat back in my days of employ­ment as a news­pa­per reporter. I vis­ited the post many, many times to cover not only mil­i­tary events but for events involv­ing our most recent ex-president. I am watch­ing CNN cov­er­age. Once again, I think for all their short­falls, CNN is still the best at break­ing news.

I have lit­tle to add to the cur­rent news cov­er­age except that I noticed dur­ing my time hang­ing around the Fort Hood area, an under­cur­rent or, vibe, if you will. One might say that’s to be expected since it is a Army base, the “free world’s largest,” as post offi­cials liked to point out dur­ing my time cov­er­ing the military.

But actu­ally, I’ve been on other mil­i­tary posts includ­ing Army posts and didn’t get this same vibe.

Since the begin­ning of the so-called “War of Ter­ror” there have been at Fort Hood as at other Army posts a num­ber of sui­cides reported. Killeen, the city out­side the post, seemed at the time I reported on the mil­i­tary at Fort Hood to have an extra­or­di­nary amount of vio­lent crime. Even before the Afghan and Iraq wars there was the hor­ror of the mass shoot­ing at the Killeen Luby’s cafe­te­ria in which 23 peo­ple were mur­dered after George Hen­nard drove his truck into the restaurant.

One sus­pect has report­edly been cap­tured and another “cor­nered” in the Fort Hood inci­dent. The big ques­tion is — since at least two peo­ple were involved — the motive. Are these guys just nuts or are they some  kind of jihadists? It will be inter­est­ing to learn more. My thoughts go out to those whose fam­ily mem­bers or friends were involved.

 Good­ness gra­cious. Another bank rob­ber in our fair city. One bad effect a city located on one of the nation’s most trav­eled Inter­states — I speak of IH-10 — faces is bank rob­bery. It’s rel­a­tively easy for a com­mit­ted bank rob­ber to drive off the inter­state, rob a bank and then hit the free­way in one direc­tion or another. Police will not say whether this is the same bank rob­ber who robbed a Hous­ton bank and appar­ently looked sim­i­lar to this fel­low, accord­ing to a local media report. I won­der what that Hous­ton bank robber’s nick­name might be? You know they all seem to get nick­names, like the Grandma Ban­dit.

 Our  — as in Beau­mont, Texas’ — ban­dit entered the Wells Fargo Bank at 595 IH-10 North on Tues­day morn­ing and robbed the place while “dis­play­ing” a sil­ver hand­gun, accord­ing to a Beau­mont Police Depart­ment press release. Police like to use words like “dis­play.” It’s like “Hey ya’ll, isn’t this the pret­ti­est 9 mm pis­tol you’ve ever seen? Now how ’bout that cash?”

 Bank employ­ees trig­gered the silent alarm and offi­cers were told the sus­pect was last seen run­ning on foot toward an apart­ment com­plex behind the bank. Police and a “K-9 Unit,” a.k.a. “a DOG and han­dler,” searched for the ban­dit to no avail.

He could be dis­play­ing his weapon in this photo.

 Police describe the sus­pect as a His­panic male, 5 feet, 10 inches to 6 feet in height, 180 pounds, dark com­plex­ion, wear­ing dark sun­glasses, a blue but­ton shirt and hav­ing short black hair. I’m sure he wears those sun­glasses and blue shirt every­where – to bed, play­ing bas­ket­ball, work­ing on his car. Okay, I’m pick­ing at the descrip­tions the police give out. I’ve writ­ten a hun­dred of these for news sto­ries when I worked as a reporter, but they sound kind of funny out of context. This one is actu­ally a bet­ter descrip­tion than some I have seen on local TV reports, such as “a black male, between 5′ 11″ and 6 feet, 175–190 pounds.” Hmm. I bet there aren’t too many of those run­ning around.

 Now I thought I had a sus­pect when I saw the shot below taken from a bank cam­era. Even though the police descrip­tion lists him as His­panic and dark-complected, he isn”t all that dark, at least in my opin­ion. Now, if you for­get that the man is sup­pos­edly His­panic and dark-complected, in this pic­ture at least, doesn’t he bear a slight resis­tance to for­mer Arkansas Gov­er­nor and failed can­di­date for the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion Mike Huckabee? 

“I’d appre­ci­ate your vote — and your money.”

I mean, look at him. Maybe Huck­abee  with a tan?

Per­haps a bit younger Mike Huck­abee with a tan.

Oh well. That’s my con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mu­nity today. That is partly why I try to write about things like this because I have a forum to do so and, who knows, maybe some­one surf­ing blogs stum­bles across this one and just might rec­og­nize the rob­ber I now dub the “Senor Mike Huckabee-almost-look-a-like-bandit-if-Huckabee-was-Hispanic.” That per­son calls the police and clang, he’s behind bars. You know, some­one might see this guy tak­ing a nap out in his chaise lounge wear­ing his sun­glasses, blue but­toned shirt and dis­play­ing his handgun.