Man Charged in Afternoon Bank Robbery

The bank robbery took less than 40 seconds to pull off Wednesday. And it took officers less than 40 minutes to track down their suspect, confiscate the money and put a man under arrest.

James Edward Langton Jr., 30, of Toledo, is charged with two counts of bank robbery and one count of felony use of a firearm. If convicted on the robbery charge, he faces up to life in prison.

On Friday, ordered Langton held without bond pending a preliminary examination of the evidence against him. That hearing is set for Thursday.

According to police, Langton walked into , 2517 Fort St., shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday wearing a hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head, a black mask, a baseball cap and gloves.

A teller immediately noticed him and yelled for him to take off the mask and pull down the hood. Instead, police said, he walked over to her, pulled out a black handgun and pointed it at her.

"This is a holdup!" he said, according to witness reports. He then gave the woman a bag and told her to fill it up. After getting money from her, police said, the man walked to the next teller and said, "You, too."

A 61-year-old Allen Park grandmother and her 15-year-old granddaughter, who attends , were inside the bank and witnessed the whole thing.

After seeing the gun, they moved to the side of the bank and avoided making eye contact with Langton in fear for their lives, police said.

A bank customer sitting in the parking lot watched the man enter the bank, run out a short while later, and jump into a 2007 Ford Taurus.

Suspicious about the quickness of the visit and the fact the man was wearing a mask, the customer wrote down the Taurus' license plate number and called police.

Using that information, officers put out a "be on the lookout" alert for the vehicle.

Within minutes, Michigan State Police troopers stopped the car, which is registered to Langton's father who lives in Ida.

Langton, who is a production worker at Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, was arrested without incident on East Front Street in Monroe. A handgun was recovered from the backseat of the Taurus and nearly $4,000 in cash was seized.

A clear cellophane wrapper containing three folded-up Michigan Lottery tickets, each containing a white powerderlike substance, also was found, leading police to believe drugs may have played a role in the robbery.