Police are investigating a bank robbery in Westminster on Tuesday, during which a mother and daughter allegedly stole cash after threatening tellers with a bomb.
However, the mother told 9News that she had no idea that her daughter even went into the bank building.
“All this time she was robbing a bank and I didn’t know,” she told the television station.
At 4:40 p.m., officers were called to the TCF Bank at 72nd Avenue and Federal Boulevard on a hold-up alarm, said Trevor Materasso, spokesman for the Westminster Police Department.
Witnesses reported that Tina Roxanne Guerrero, 31, entered the bank carrying a duffel bag and claimed that there was a bomb inside.
No one reported seeing any other weapon.
Guerrero grabbed an undisclosed amount of cash before darting out of the bank to a waiting brown SUV, allegedly driven by her mother, 53-year-old Norma Edwina Sisneros.
An undercover police officer, who was in the area for a different case, spotted the SUV leaving the bank. The officer relayed a description of the SUV to other officers, Materasso said.
Soon after, the SUV was spotted and stopped near 75th Avenue and Broadway.
Sisneros was arrested on scene.
Guerrero ran away from the car but was later found hiding in the laundry room of a nearby apartment complex. She was arrested without incident, Materasso said.
Detectives did not find a bomb when the two were arrested.
The two were arrested on suspicion of aggravated robbery representing a deadly weapon. They are being held at the Adams County Jail.
Materasso said there was no indication that the pair was responsible for any other bank robberies in the area.
According to state records, Guerrero – unlike her mother – has a long criminal record, including an arrest for assault in Commerce City in April 1998.
In June 2001, she was arrested for possession of a controlled substance in Aurora and was charged with the same offense in Lakewood in December 2002. Almost two years later, Guerrero was arrested for shoplifting in Lakewood. She was arrested again in Denver in September 2007, on suspicion of disturbing the peace and assault.
In September 2003, Sisneros was arrested in Northglenn on a traffic charge.
Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794 or jsteffen@denverpost.com
