Attempted Bank Hold Up, Downtown Concord Thefts Under Investigation

CONCORD, NH — Police are investigating an incident at a bank as well as thefts in Downtown Concord possibly connected to the same person, a walk away from New Hampshire Hospital, on Friday.

Just before noon, police dispatch took a call from an employee at Starbucks on Storrs Street claiming a woman came into the store and stole a tip jar. The woman then fled from the store toward Market Basket. The suspect was described as white, about 5 feet, 5 inches tall, wearing a white winter jacket with a white hat with a pompom and light hair.

About 15 minutes later, a teller holdup alarm was struck at the Ledyard National Bank on South Main Street.

Officers quietly surrounded the bank and began checking registrations on vehicles parked behind it. A watch commander began communicating with an employee at the bank and learned the suspect was a woman wearing a gator mask who had left the area and walked south on South Main Street. The employee met with police in the back of the bank while other officers began searching the area for the suspect.

Just before 12:30 p.m., dispatch took two calls about other incidents possibly involving the same suspect.

A caller from West Street reported a woman attempting to access cars on the street. The woman matched the suspect’s description in the tip jar theft case, wearing a neck warmer over her face. A second caller reported a bag stolen from a vehicle in the Marshalls store parking lot on Storrs Street. The theft suspect matched the tip jar suspect.

“So she has a red and blue bag with her that’s stolen,” the dispatcher said.

Officers at the bank and the watch commander reported attempting to determine precisely what happened inside the bank. One officer put up caution tape around the scene. Later, the employee accused the suspect of saying she was holding up the bank and demanding all their money, according to scanner chatter.

An officer found a woman matching the description of the suspect in the area of Gas Street near the Water Street bridge, an area frequented by several homeless people and camps, a few minutes later.

“She saw me, turned away, and started running,” the officer said.

The officer said she did stop and reportedly gave two names. The officer suggested they could be aliases. One name given was a woman with a lengthy criminal history in Concord and the capital region, and the Lakes Region.

Dispatch then told the officer they had just received a phone call from the New Hampshire State Hospital about the woman with the second name fleeing from the library during a meeting with a social worker.

A New Hampshire State Police trooper arrived to assist and checked the name. They confirmed with state hospital campus police it was the woman who fled from the social worker earlier in the day.

Concord NH Patch will update this post when more information becomes available.

Do you have a news tip? Please email it to tony.schinella@patch.com. View videos on Tony Schinella's YouTube.com channel or Rumble.com channel. Follow the NH politics Twitter account @NHPatchPolitics for all our campaign coverage.