The FBI is looking for a trio of brazen robbers who attempted to knock off an armored car as it was making a bank delivery last week in Philadelphia.
The heist took place in broad daylight Thursday, just steps from the Ivy League campus of the University of Pennsylvania.
Video shows a red SUV pulling up behind the armored car, just minutes after it stopped outside a PNC Bank.
Two men approached the Garda armored car at 10 a.m., one armed with an assault rifle and the other multiple handguns, and attempted to take “a large sum of cash,” according to the Philadelphia Police Department.
As the robbers lifted bags of cash from the back of the truck, a Garda employee opened fire on the robbers, police said. The two robbers fled from the gunfire, and dropped the bags of cash.
“We both dove for cover. She went one way, I went the other,” a bystander, along with her sister, told Philadelphia ABC station WPVI. “I couldn’t find her and that was very terrifying, very terrifying. There was a lot of bystanders at that point in time and people were running.”
It was unclear if the suspects fired any shots, but a bullet did blow out the back window of the red SUV being driven by the suspects.
One man jumped into the SUV as it drove off, while the other fled on foot, police said. Authorities are now searching for both armed suspects and the driver of the vehicle.
“Stupidity. Strictly stupidity,” Niema Bell, an employee at the Dunkin’ across the street from the PNC Bank, told WPVI. “The location, it was scary. Everyone is just trying to get to work and have a normal Thursday and it was impossible with that going on.”
No bystanders were injured in the shooting. Police planned to search area hospitals to see if any of the suspects were hit.
The FBI said a reward was being offered for the information leading to an arrest and conviction, but did not specify how much.
