The United States Attorney has charged Christopher M Thibodeau and Dennis R. Evans with bank robbery for a robbery at a Bank Rhode Island branch in Cranston last June in which $37,000 was taken.  Thibodeau, 40, and Evans, 58, both of Cranston, were arrested in a wooded area near I-295, after a police officer responding to the robbery saw two men running across the highway, wearing masks. 

United States Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, Warren T. Bamford, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Colonel Stephen McGrath, Cranston Police Chief, jointly announced an information charging Evans, which was filed today and one naming Thibodeau, filed on January 31.

According to an affidavit supporting earlier federal complaints against Thibodeau and Evans, two men wearing masks entered the BankRI branch on Plainfield Pike on the morning of June 29, one holding a gun.  One jumped over the teller’s counter and took money from the drawers, stuffing it into a dark plastic garbage bag.  One of the men then ordered tellers to open the ATM machine, and the robbers took cash from that.

According to the affidavit, the men fled the bank in a stolen car.  A customer at the bank’s drive-up window witnessed the robbery and followed the get-away car to a nearby industrial area, where the two men fled the vehicle and ran across I-295.

According to the affidavit, Cranston Patrol officer Robert Santagata, responding to the robbery report, saw two men wearing masks cross I-295 and head into nearby woods.  Officers from several police departments searched the woods, and found Evans lying beneath a tree and over a garbage bag full of money.  Police arrested Thibodeau walking through the woods, several hundred yards from where Evans had been found.

According to a BankRI tally, approximately $37,553 was taken in the robbery.  Police recovered all but $75.
The informations charge Thibodeau and Evans with conspiracy to commit bank robbery and armed bank robbery.  Also filed at the same time as each information was an agreement signed by the defendant to plead guilty to the charges.   That agreements notwithstanding, an information is merely an allegation and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty, or until they formally enter guilty pleas, as called for in the agreements.

Upon conviction, the statutory maximum penalty for conspiracy is five years in prison and for armed bank robbery, 25 years.  Each offense also has a maximum fine of $250,000.

Cranston Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case.  Rhode Island Sate Police and Johnston Police assisted in the arrests.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth P. Madden is prosecuting the case.