Woodbury, Long Island, got an unexpected taste of Bullitt today as police hunted down two runaway bank robbers. What followed was a ready-for-TV manhunt and lockdown on Long Island.
It started when a pair of armed suspects held up a Chase branch in Bay Shore at 9 a.m. and then made a mad dash north up Route 135, chased by squads of police cars across two highways. That part of the chase ended when the getaway car crashed into a police cruiser on the Jericho Turnpike, 20 miles from the bank, witnesses told WCBS. The suspects then ran from their car into a wooded area, eventually trying to hide in an apartment complex called Eagle Rock.
What followed was pretty rare for this otherwise sleepy hamlet with very little crime. Police helicopters circled overhead, K-9 teams searched the woods, SWAT teams advanced on the apartment complex — and, as it turns out, the search ended quickly, because the bank had placed a GPS device in the bag of stolen money. The two suspects were soon arrested, one while trying to cross the street.
One of them, hurt, was taken to a local hospital and held there; the other is in jail. Police continue to search the surrounding area out of an “abundance of caution to make sure that there are no other suspects involved,” said Suffolk County deputy police commissioner Tim Sini. Syosset, the town next to Woodbury, closed down its schools on Wednesday morning as the investigation proceeded.
