Suspect in ‘Handsome Guy’ bank robberies arrested after Mississippi chase

A suspect in the North Texas “Handsome Guy” bank robberies was captured in Mississippi on Tuesday after the local sheriff, pursuing the man at 85 mph, shot out his tire.

Steven Ray Milam, a casket salesman from Tyler, was taken into custody Tuesday after leading Jackson County deputies on the high-speed chase along Interstate 10, near the Mississippi-Alabama line.

The capture ended the flight of a man police say was good with a disguise but ultimately not so effective in his getaways.

The thief got his nickname from an elaborate latex mask used in more than a half-dozen bank robberies in Dallas, Irving, Richardson and Plano. But during an escape from a holdup in Richardson on Saturday, the robber left important clues, police said.

For eight months, North Texas police had been looking for someone who wore the distinctive and expensive mask during a series of bank robberies. The disguise had made it impossible for police to identify a suspect.

On Saturday, as a robber wearing the mask was walking out of the Compass Bank on East Campbell Road in Richardson, police drove up. The robber shot three times into a police car and ran off into the neighborhood, police said.

The thief vanished. But police later found the bank’s money, a gun, a mask and clothing — and an electronic car key, said Richardson police spokesman Sgt. Kevin Perlich. The key matched a car parked near the bank, and Richardson police sent out an alert for its owner.

On Tuesday morning, a Mississippi deputy checked the tag of a red Volkswagen Jetta coming from Alabama, said Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd. A computer report came back indicating that the car’s owner was Milam, said to be “armed and dangerous” and wanted for killing a police officer, he said.

Nobody was injured in Saturday’s shooting; Richardson police said they accidentally entered the code for “homicide” instead of “attempted homicide” in the alert.

But when the driver of the Jetta refused to stop, a pack of Mississippi deputies gave chase.

Law enforcement sealed off about 15 miles of the interstate while a dozen cars chased the Jetta.

Deputies reported seeing the driver toss a handgun out the window, but no weapon had been found Tuesday afternoon, Byrd said.

Three times, deputies tossed spikes in front of the fleeing car, but the driver avoided them. That’s when Byrd sped alongside.

“Knowing that he was armed and dangerous, that’s when I made the decision to take out the tire,” Byrd said.

He said he shot twice, hitting the right rear tire both times. That ended the 15-mile chase.

Once in the back of a deputy’s car, Milam vomited, leading Byrd to fear that his suspect had swallowed pills. Milam was taken to a hospital where he was being kept overnight for observation.

Milam is facing Mississippi charges of felony evasion in addition to the possible bank robbery and attempted capital murder charges in Texas.

The 44-year-old had served a two-year federal prison sentence for a pair of Dallas bank robberies in 2005, none involving fancy masks.

Perlich did not know why the suspect ended up in Mississippi.

“We had an idea he was fleeing the state, but we didn’t know where he might be headed,” he said.

Source: Dallas Morning News