New Haven Independent

The chase and arrest took place shortly before 2 p.m. Wednesday.

It began at the TD Bank branch at College and Chapel across from the Green.

Visitor Darren Dresser stopped into the bank to get change for a parking meter. He was in town visiting his sister and brother-in-law.

Dresser noticed a man behind him in line. A man holding a note.

Dresser didn’t think too much about that — until a few minutes later, when he left the bank and saw the man running out.

The man went into a waiting cab.

“Then a red dye pack exploded behind him,” Dresser recalled a little while later. “He jumped out. The cabbie shouted after him. He started running” south on College, toward Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School. (Click on the play arrow at the top of this story to watch his and others’ testimony.)

Dresser followed him, leaving half a block between them, “in case he was armed.”

The suspect turned onto George Street, into the former phone company building at 300 George that now houses medical labs.

Dresser, who’s 38, had left his cell phone behind. He asked people in the building to call the cops. He figured his work was done; now “the men in blue could do their job.”

Within moments, cops in about a dozen cruisers converged on the building.

Meanwhile, the man popped into Cafe George by Paula, a restaurant inside the building.

His clothes didn’t have any dye on them at this point, though he still apparently had traces of ink on his face.

That’s what Johna Pompano, a waitress at Cafe George, noticed.

She was serving other customers when the man approached her. He ordered a grape soda.

“He walked in all sweaty.” Pompano recalled moments later. “But I was in the middle of doing something.

“[He said,] ‘How much is this? How much is this?’ I said, ‘Sir, you have to wait a minute.’”

The man had entered from a door inside the building.

Pompano got him a Stewart’s grape soda. He went to the cashier to pay.

Just then, cops entered the restaurant from an outside door. They announced that someone had robbed a bank and had exploded dye on him.

“Well there he is!” she exclaimed. Cops grabbed him.

“I didn’t see any cash on him. He had some dye on his face and dye on his hands,” said Lt. Martin Tchakirides, who was at the scene.

Officers marked three different scenes for further investigation: portions of 300 George, including the alley; the taxicab; and the bank branch itself.

Police charged the suspect, a 40 year-old man from Meriden, with robbery in the second degree and larceny in the sixth degree.

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the man had left the bank with “an undetermined” amount of cash which he had received upon demand (along with the dye) from a teller. Police recovered the money, according to Mayorga. She said the suspect had changed clothes in a bathroom at 300 George.

Leonard Honeyman contributed reporting to this story.