Police: Bank robber had second thoughts, turned himself in

William Waters had a head start on authorities, but he turned his truck around minutes after making off with an undisclosed amount of cash from a Chase Bank branch and turned himself in, police said.

The 59-year-old Arlington resident admitted to the robbery, according to a police news release, and pointed investigators to the stolen cash inside his truck.

“I don’t know why he had second thoughts and turned around,” Grand Prairie police spokeswoman Chelsea Kretz said in an email. “We’ll find out.”

According to the release, a man walked into the Chase location at 700 E. Main St. about 9:30 a.m., and gave a teller a note demanding money.

The note also claimed that the suspect had a bomb, and he left an unidentified package on the teller’s counter as he exited the building. Just after 1 p.m., and an arrest had been made, though, police determined with the help of bomb-detecting robots and bomb-sniffing dogs that there was no bomb.

Fewer than 10 customers were inside the branch location at the time. Witnesses told police that the robber did not wear a mask and never brandished a weapon, other than the unidentified package he claimed in the note to be a bomb.

Grand Prairie police are running a concurrent investigation into the robbery with the FBI. The Grand Prairie PD news release said that Waters was not immediately considered to be a suspect in any other robberies.

Fort Worth saw a surge in bank robberies from late July to early August.

This story was originally published August 23, 2017 at 2:33 PM with the headline "Police: Bank robber had second thoughts, turned himself in."