Mantua, West Deptford Bank Robber Gets Decade in Prison

A former West Deptford man with a lengthy criminal history was sentenced to two ten-year terms in state prison Monday for a pair of bank robberies last summer.

Thomas A. Struss, 35, who lived in the St. Regis Walk townhomes, to robbing the TD Bank at Parkville Station Road and Mantua Pike, and The Bank on Bridgeton Pike in Mantua, as well attempting to disarm a Gloucester County sheriff’s officer at Underwood-Memorial Hospital while being treated for an injury last August.

Under terms of that plea agreement with the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office, Struss, who is currently in prison for drugs possession, will serve the 10-year sentences concurrently with each other, and won't be eligible for parole before completing 85 percent of the sentence.

Superior Court Judge Walter L. Marshall Jr. noted Struss had 18 juvenile adjudications for crimes and an adult record that included convictions for burglary, drug possession, aggravated assault and a prior bank robbery during sentencing.

Struss admitted to robbing the two banks within days of each other on July 22 and July 25, 2010. In Mantua, he threatened a teller that he would use a deadly weapon and stole $922, and made similar threats when he stole more than $2,000 from the West Deptford bank, which is mere blocks from his former home. In neither case did he actually show a weapon.

West Deptford and Mantua police identified Struss from bank office cameras and by distinctive pointed tattoos on his neck, which had been noticed in Struss’s previous run-ins with the law. He was arrested at his home on St. Regis Court in West Deptford on July 28, 2010.