On a July day as he was obtaining a money order from a Roselle bank, C. Brett Swoape realized his checkbook showed a $3,000 shortfall.
And, according to court testimony Thursday, that was when he started to plan a bank robbery.
”He had a month to think about it, and he developed a well-thought-out plan,” said Craig Chval, Du Page County assistant state`s attorney, at a Bond Court hearing on charges that Swoape robbed the Suburban National Bank of Elk Grove Village in Roselle on Aug. 10 before engaging in a bloody shootout with police.
Swoape, released Thursday from Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, where he had been undergoing treatment for gunshot wounds, stood silently throughout his brief initial appearance before a judge on the charges.
Judge George Bakalis approved Chval`s request that the defendant be held without bond on charges of attempted murdered in connection with the shooting of three suburban police officers who were wounded before Swoape was arrested after the $12,000 bank robbery and auto chase.
Chval said Swoape had no previous criminal record when he drove a stolen car to the bank at 801 E. Nerge Rd., Roselle, and entered the building with a shotgun while wearing a camouflage stretch mask and a red, white and blue jogging suit.
Police said he pointed the shotgun at a teller, ordered her to open several cash drawers and left with the contents of two of them.
Several blocks away, he abandoned the stolen car, Chval said, and got into another stolen car he had planted there. Meanwhile, a number of police cars from surrounding departments converged on the area and began the chase.
Near Army Trail Road and Illinois Highway 53, Swoape stopped his car and exchanged shots with Itasca Patrol Officer David Hancock from a distance of 10 to 12 feet, Chval said.
Later in the chase, in which several shots were fired by both sides, Swoape fired at and hit Roselle Police Chief Richard Eddington and Roselle Sgt. Jimmy Lee.
Other officers took up the chase, which ended in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant on Irving Park Road in Roselle when Swoape`s car crashed into a tree.
Swoape was shot in the head and surrendered. He was hospitalized under police guard until his court appearance Thursday.
Chval said that inside the second stolen car, police recovered a police scanner tuned to the Roselle Police Department`s frequency, a shotgun with empty casings, Latex surgical gloves, several sets of clothing, tools often used in auto thefts and $12,000.
Chval told Bakalis that Swoape gave details of the crime in statements made to FBI and Roselle investigators on Aug. 12 at the hospital.
