ALBANY, Ore. – Two police officers caught a robber inside Linn-Co FCU yesterday morning as the suspect was preparing to bind a female employee with duct tape.
The suspect, a 30-year-old man, was armed with a .45 caliber semi-automatic and a three-inch knife, when police responded to an alarm at 8:15 am. When the officers went into the credit union they found the suspect, identified as Lawrence Beckner, holding a credit union employee at gunpoint. The officers told him to drop the gun and he did, and they arrested him.
The man had duct tape, plastic ties, the knife, but no cash. The gun was not loaded.
The credit union employee had arrived to open the back door of the branch when she was approached by the robber. The alarm had gone off because she wasn’t able to deactivate it before she opened the door.
Beckner told police he planned to bind the employee with the duct tape and take her with him in her car, to where his car was.
