Teller testifies

LIHUE — Dark clothing and long sleeves.

That’s about as much as the bank teller who was robbed at gunpoint New Year’s Eve said she remembers about the man during the incident.

The preliminary hearing for bank robbery suspects Brandon Hartberg, 26, and Matthew Rose, 27, began Thursday in the district before Circuit Court Judge Trudy Senda to determine probable cause.

The two have each been charged with robbery in the first degree, terroristic threatening in the first degree and theft in the second degree for allegedly robbing the Kapaa branch of Bank of Hawaii. Police said Hartberg is the man who went inside the bank holding a rifle, while Rose drove the getaway car.

The state asked the court to consolidate the cases in an effort to receive evidence. There were no objections by the defense, Michael Green, counsel for Rose, and Melinda Mendes, counsel for Hartberg.

One witness was called to the stand Thursday. A second witness for the state, Kauai Police Department Detective Christian Jenkins, was recalled for Tuesday.

The teller, who remembers being terrified, could not say with certainty what the robber’s face looked like, could not recall whether the man had any facial hair, whether he was slender, or could not remember his height or approximate age.

“How much of his face did you see, if any?” Green asked her.

“Enough to know that he was Caucasian,” she said.

Green then showed the teller a picture of a video surveillance image of the man who robbed her at gunpoint and asked her the question again.

“You can see a chin and a nose and …,” she said.

“And part of a cheek,” Green finished.

“The point is, and this is no offense to you, but you didn’t even want to look at the person once you saw a gun, right?” Green said. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?

The teller said she was more focused on the bank robber’s weapon instead of looking at his face and felt threatened during the incident. She said she didn’t remember his hoodie, his sunglasses and all she wanted was the robber out of the bank.

“I remember dark clothing and long sleeves,” the bank teller testified.

The bank teller said the robber came up to her while she was assisting another customer and knew at that point that it was not a normal transaction.

“He was there suddenly and got my attention by throwing a bag at me and saying something to the effect of, ‘give me the money,’” she said.

She said she took out $1,088 in marked bills with serial numbers and put the money on the counter.

Although she was trained to comply and to deal with these kinds of situations, she testified she broke down after the bank robbery.

“I did scream after he left,” she said.

“Somebody came over to me and hugged me and pulled the alarm under my window,” she said. “I sat down in the coffee room.”

She said she never reviewed any statements she made to police and if she saw the robber now, she could not identify him.

Police arrested Hartberg and Rose two and half hours after the robbery at Bank of Hawaii on suspicion of first-degree robbery. In their report, police said they noticed a green sedan leaving the Kauai County Cemetery on Kanaele Road and monitored the vehicle. Patrol officers on the ground stopped the vehicle and arrested the two men inside.

Green said he doesn’t understand why KPD went after Hartberg and Rose in the first place.

“They are looking for one guy who is running around on foot and when they make the arrest, there’s no gun, there’s no hoodie, there’s no sunglasses,” Green told The Garden Island. “It’s just two guys. And they handcuff them and take them to jail. I think they have a problem at the time of the arrest. I think there was not probable cause. They could have stopped them, if they were really were suspicious. But why they arrested them at that point, I have no idea.”

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Michelle Iracheta, cops and courts reporter, can be reached at 245-0424 or miracheta@thegardenisland.com. Follow Michelle on Twitter @cephira