Police name Dilworth bank robbery suspect who told teller he had a bomb

A man pulled out a device he said was a bomb before he fled with cash from a PNC Bank branch in Charlotte’s Dilworth neighborhood on Friday, police said.

The man didn’t get far before a police helicopter crew spotted him and officers arrested him, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department news release late Friday.

Police identified the suspect on Saturday as 58-year-old Rhett Ingram and said he was charged with common law robbery.

Ingram was in the Mecklenburg County jail on $50,000 bail Saturday night, jail records showed.

Police aren’t saying what the device looks like or how big it is.

The bank at 1000 East Boulevard was robbed just before 2:30 p.m. Friday, according to the CMPD release.

After the helicopter crew saw the suspect, two officers from CMPD’s Providence Division apprehended him “without incident” at the Shell gas station at East Boulevard and Kenilworth Road, police said in the release.

At CMPD headquarters, the man admitted the device was not a bomb but was made to look like one, police said. He also told officers where he hid the device after the robbery. The CMPD bomb squad and a K-9 unit retrieved the device and confirmed it was fake.

This story was originally published May 25, 2019 at 12:49 PM.