Tie-dye wearing lady bank robber caught

UPDATE: Ten days after a suspect wearing a tie-dye hoodie robbed a Winter Park bank, police think they have their woman.

Orlando Police pulled over Christl Ariana Williams-Daniels for driving with a suspended license before they discovered that she may be the same woman who walked into the Bank of America location on South Orlando Avenue and pulled the city’s first bank robbery in more than a year and a half.

The robbery occurred just after 1 p.m. when the female suspect wearing a tie-dye hooded sweatshirt handed a bank teller a note demanding money and implying a concealed weapon.

The suspect left the bank with an undisclosed amount of money. Nobody was injured.

Winter Park hadn’t seen a bank robbery since April of 2011 when suspect Quinton Wilmer Jay Walker robbed the Bank of America at 1905 Aloma Ave.

The shortage of bank robberies shows a commitment by the Winter Park Police to keeping banks safe, Police Chief Brett Railey said.

“We intend to exhaust all resources available to apprehend this suspect, just like we were able to do for the one in 2011,” Railey said. “We have an excellent cooperative relationship with all the banks within our city.”

The Winter Park Police Department tries to be cognizant that the holiday season sees more robberies than usual, Sgt. Jamie Loomis said. Extra patrols are strategically placed to help deter potential criminals.

“We can’t predict where these things are going to happen, we just make sure that any trends that we see we share with our businesses through our Business Watch program,” Loomis said.

“We all just work together, do the best we can and hope that we keep them from getting victimized.”

Bank robberies with female suspects occur even less frequently in the city of Winter Park, Loomis said. But that doesn’t mean that women aren’t robbing banks. An average of 441 bank robberies in the U.S. were committed by women between 2009 and 2011, according to bank crime statistics kept by the FBI.

“I think it would be good for all of us not to be stuck with having in our minds that there’s a certain description of an individual who’s going to be the perpetrator of a crime,” Loomis said. “I think anyone can do it at any time, and if you’re prepared for that, then you’re more open to considering every opportunity to solve the crime.”