Stu­dent held at gun­point dur­ing sum­mer job

June 17, 2009 be­gan rou­tinely at the Lake City Bank in Sil­ver Lake, Ind. Se­nior Robby Ham­man, who has worked at the branch for the past three sum­mers, spent most of the morn­ing de­posit­ing and cash­ing checks for the bank’s reg­u­lars. Shortly be­fore 10 a.m., the day trans­formed from ca­sual to chaotic when a man, armed with a hand­gun, en­tered the bank and ap­proached Ham­man’s sta­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ham­man, the man, now iden­ti­fied as Vir­gil Justin Smith of Galve­ston, Ind., en­tered the first of two doors to the bank undis­guised. Im­me­di­ately af­ter a fel­low teller noted she had never seen him be­fore, Ham­man said the man pulled a white ban­dana up over his mouth.

“When he walked through the doors and pulled up the ban­dana I thought, ‘Uh-oh. Oh crap. We are go­ing to get robbed.’ And I started to get ner­vous,” Ham­man said.

 Af­ter point­ing the gun at him, Ham­man said Smith shouted to every­one to stay calm and fol­low his in­struc­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Ham­man, Smith then de­manded they give him all of the money in their draw­ers, adding later that no alarms should be pulled and no “bait” money be given.

“We gave him some of our 100s and 50s, and then he asked us to give him the 20s and 10s,” Ham­man said. “He just kept say­ing, ‘Give me some more, give me some more.’ He put it into a bag and then ran off.”

Ham­man and his cowork­ers were shaken from the rob­bery but sus­tained no in­juries. No cus­tomers were pre­sent at the time of the rob­bery and Sil­ver Lake Po­lice ar­rived 15 to 20 min­utes later. Ham­man was ques­tioned by a county de­tec­tive and gave an of­fi­cial state­ment. Af­ter in­ter­view­ing the Sil­ver Lake staff, po­lice ad­vised the tellers to con­tact close rel­a­tives be­fore word spread to lo­cal news or­ga­ni­za­tions. Ham­man made his first call to his mother.

Upon hear­ing the news of the in­ci­dent, Sher­ril Ham­man’s moth­erly in­stincts were trig­gered into full ef­fect.

“…My im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion was fear for my child, and anger at the per­son who did (the rob­bery),” said Sher­ril Ham­man. “When I found out he had a gun pointed right at him, I think my heart stopped. No mother likes to see her child threat­ened, it kicks in the ‘pro­tec­tion mode’ in us.”

Smith has since con­fessed to the rob­bery and au­thor­i­ties said they have re­trieved ev­i­dence of his con­nec­tion in two other bank rob­beries in In­di­ana. This in­ci­dent marks a first for both the Ham­mans and the peo­ple of Sil­ver Lake, Ind. Un­til this fate­ful June day, a bank rob­bery had never af­fected their lives or this com­mu­nity.

Ham­man re­turned to work the next day and life at the branch re­turned to nor­mal. Ham­man still con­sid­ers the ex­pe­ri­ence to be “sur­real.” When he looks back at it, he still can­not be­lieve it hap­pened at all. When asked what he learned from the ex­pe­ri­ence, Ham­man said he now has a bet­ter idea of the pres­sure the re­cent eco­nomic re­ces­sion has put on peo­ple who are strug­gling to sur­vive

“Peo­ple will go to des­per­ate mea­sures to ful­fill their needs,” Ham­man said.