Shootout, standoff lead to federal charges

An attempted armored van robbery and shootout in Odessa landed a guard in the hospital and later led to a tense standoff that sent a SWAT team and an armored personnel carrier to a Midland County mobile home park and two men into federal custody facing major charges.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, Department of Public Safety troopers as well as deputies and officers from Midland County and Odessa surrounded a trailer behind the Runway 7 convenience store on Business Interstate 20 west of Midland.

FBI senior resident agent Matthew W. Espenshade said SWAT agents were able to get four people out of the trailer, including two suspects believed to be connected to an attempted robbery of an armored van outside the Western National Bank at University Boulevard and Grandview Avenue at about 11 a.m. Thursday.

Espenshade wouldn't release the names of the two men but did say both are facing federal attempted bank robbery charges.
Meanwhile, Matthew Parker, a guard with H&K Armored Service Inc., was shot four times during the robbery attempt. He was taken to Medical Center Hospital where he was listed in fair condition as of Thursday night.

The standoff began at about 5 p.m., hours after two men with assault rifles wounded the 25-year-old guard outside Western National Bank in the 2700 block of North Grandview Avenue.

Espenshade and multiple witnesses said the robbers exchanged gunfire with Parker and another guard during the attempt. The two suspects taken from the mobile home were not injured.

After wounding Parker, police and witnesses said, the two gunmen and a getaway driver fled the scene in a green and tan 1990s model Ford Explorer.

Espenshade said they received tips and information two or three hours later on the trailer near the Runway 7 store, just off Business 20. Officers watched the trailer and eventually saw the Explorer.

Officers told everyone inside the mobile home park to stay indoors while armed Midland County SWAT officers, locking and loading assault rifles as they entered the store, told everyone to get out. BI-20's access road was shut off as well.
Espenshade said the trailer home park was not evacuated because doing so would have alerted the suspects.

Espenshade said he could not disclose whether any agents found any money from the armored van on the suspects.  FBI agents were still searching the trailer by press time.

The Scenes
Back at the site of the shootout, bullet holes riddled storefront windows of two nearby businesses and a parked car as dozens of police officers responded at about 11 a.m. with automatic guns drawn and began searching nearby shops for the suspects before concluding they had fled the scene.

Dozens of people witnessed the gunfire in the busy shopping center. 
   
"I just heard plow, plow, plow," said a visibly shaken Ray Benitez, who was shopping nearby when he heard the shots. "I ducked behind this Focus right here and saw them shooting."

As Benitez recalled the shooting about 20 minutes after it had happened, he pointed to a sidewalk outside a nearby shop.
"Then one of them ran right there," he continued.

Nadia Gomez, an employee at the nearby Mr. Gatti's restaurant, said she was walking to the adjacent Dollar General when she heard the gunshots echo through the shopping center and hit the glass windows of shops only 20 or 30 feet away.

She remembered hearing about five or six gunshots and referred to the situation as "surreal, just like the cop videos on TV."
"From there, it was just shooting, shooting, shooting," she said.

"It's pretty scary," she added later. "I was really shaking and in a panic and didn't know what to do."

In addition to a parked car, the windows of at least three businesses - Trinkets and Treasures, Always and Forever Gifts and Swan Cleaners - were damaged by the gunfire.

Kamie Pfannenstiel, an employee at Betty's Bobbin Box, a sewing shop located between the two damaged businesses, said she took cover after hearing the gunshots.

Hours after the shooting, she resumed the delivery of sewing machines amid the silent blue and red flashes of investigators' car lights.

Foot traffic had been cut off, she said, but the shop was still doing its business by bringing the machines out to customers.

"There's a concern because you never know what's going to happen," she said. "They could come into your business. But, no, I'm not afraid to come to work or anything."

Cortney Sherman, an employee of the bank who was out of the office on vacation Thursday, arrived at the scene after the shooting to bring her sequestered coworkers food.

When she first heard the news of the shooting, she said the worry brought her to tears.

"It's just hard to think that if I didn't have off today, I would have been here," she said, staring toward the bank beyond the police tape.

"Even not being here," she added, "it still bothers you a lot."
 
Back at the Midland trailer park, it bothered Billy Browning as well. He said he only saw "a bunch of cops" pulling into one of the trailers near his as he looked from the Composite Lining Systems yard, where he was working when the standoff happened.

"I was told by my boss to stay in the back," he said.

When told by an Odessa American reporter what went down there, Browning said it was "sad" knowing a standoff would happen in the neighborhood, especially since a lot of children were there.

Amy Zoniga didn't have much of a choice. Her trailer was next door to where the suspects were, and she was trying to get back home from San Angelo when she came across the road block.

The thought of the standoff happening next door made her a bit uneasy.

"It kind of makes you leery," she said.