Messy Handwriting Foils Delaware Man’s Robbery Attempt

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For one would-be bank robber, “take the money and run” is easier said than done.

Accused thief Thomas Love was arrested Saturday after he slipped a note demanding money to a teller at the WSFS Bank in New Castle, Del., police said. Instead of giving over the money, the teller handed him back the note.

“After receiving the note, the teller could not decipher what Love had written, and handed it back to him, and asked that he rewrite it so that it could be re-read,” said a news release from the Delaware State Police.

Love, either panicked or frustrated, took back his note and left the bank with no money.

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After he fled, the tellers conferred and determined that it had been a robbery attempt. A police officer located Love and arrested him for attempted robbery. Love was unarmed and no one was injured during the incident.

“We get plenty of notes passed, but none where they’ve been illegible,” said St. Paul Shavack, the Delaware State Police public information officer. “We found the note down the street in a trash can.”

“We had to call in the hieroglyphics expert,” he joked.

Shavack said the note could not be totally deciphered but said Love wrote something about “no dye packs,” referring to money banks sometimes give out during robberies where the stacks have a dye that detonates onto the money and the robber, making both easy to identify.

Love, 40, has been charged with attempted robbery and is being held at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institute on a $2,000 bond.

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