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Imagine you’re the teller working the front window at a quiet bank in the Keys, when 43-year-old Eli Escalera walks up and hands you a note: “Give me what are 20s and 50s.”
“Is this a robbery?” you wonder, staring at the bizarrely worded demand. “And why the hell is this guy wearing a pair of shorts on his head?”
Escalara indeed was trying to rob the bank, Monroe County Sheriff’s officers now say, although when the teller confronted him he mumbled, “Never mind” and wandered away.
The year’s strangest failed bank robbery — (we’re not counting the guy in the Obama mask because he actually walked out with some cash) — went down around around 12:30 p.m. on Friday at Stock Island’s First State Bank.
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When Escalara left, the bank’s manager called the Monroe County Sheriff’s with one of the more exact suspect descriptions they’ll ever get: a Hispanic man in a blue short, dark cargos, and shorts on his head.
The cops spotted Escalara a few blocks away, according to Becky Herrin, a spokeswoman for the department, trying to flee on a bicycle.
Left unanswered, though, is the key question of why Escalara wore shorts in lieu of a baseball cap. Did he think the shorts covered his face? If so, he should take a look at the bank’s surveillance footage:
Escalara, who lists a home address on Stock Island, has been charged with felony robbery. Here he is sans head shorts:
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