Suspect sought in Wasilla KeyBank robbery

WASILLA — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a man who robbed a Wasilla bank Wednesday.

According to an FBI press release, the robbery happened at 7:57 p.m. at the KeyBank at 201 N. Lucille St., which sits at the corner of Lucille and Parks Highway.

“After obtaining an undisclosed amount of money, the subject fled the bank on foot via the bank’s western exit, headed south, ran across the Parks Highway, across railroad tracks, and out of the view of witnesses towards Railroad Avenue and Lake Lucille. Shortly thereafter, witnesses saw a car heading eastbound on Railroad Avenue then southbound on Knik-Goose Bay Road at a high rate of speed,” the press release states.

The FBI says the man has light skin and is 6-feet tall, medium built with possibly dark hair. He was wearing camouflage pants and gloves, a thick camouflage jacket with a detachable hood that was pulled up over his head, sunglasses with black lenses and black plastic frames and a black scarf or balaclava covering his nose to his throat. They say the car speeding out of the area was white or silver with a black hood and black front bumper that didn’t match the rest of the car.

Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at 276-4441 or the Wasilla Police Department at 352-5401.

Robbery — defined in legal terms as the use of force or the threat of force in the commission of a theft — is relatively rare in the Valley. Bank robberies are almost unheard of, though Valley residents do sometimes get charged with robbing Anchorage banks.

In 2011, for instance, federal authorities arrested Palmer resident Shaun Joseph Vehlewald, 33, on allegations he’d robbed an Anchorage Credit Union 1 branch.

Generally, though, robbery cases in the Valley involve people who were robbed in their homes, often of drugs or cash. Vehlewald eventually received a sentence of 35 months in prison and three years of supervised release and an order to pay $2,924.75 in restitution, according to court records. Federal prison records list him as an inmate in Seattle prison.

The most recent robbery case in Frontiersman archives occurred in September 2013. Alaska State Troopers alleged at the time that Matthew R. Jones, 27, pointed the gun he’d just taken from a home at the homeowner who surprised him in the act. Jones is scheduled to change his plea next month.

Traditional stick-up type robberies of businesses do happen in the Valley but almost always target gas stations. The most recent person to make news knocking over a convenience store was Shayne Anselm, 19, who received a sentence of three years in prison last month for his case that included a burglary of a Talkeetna home and the 2013 armed robbery of the Big Lake Tesoro, in which he netted $170 from the till. Anselm is listed in prison records as an inmate at Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.