Robbery suspect faces more charges
WAYNESBURG – A Jefferson Township woman arrested last week and accused of the armed robbery of a Rogersville bank more than two years ago now faces additional charges that she burglarized a bus garage weeks earlier and stole $25,000 from a safe.
Amanda Lynn Black was held for trial Wednesday on all charges in connection with the March 19, 2013, robbery of Community Bank along Route 21 in which she and another woman allegedly got away with an undisclosed amount of cash.
State police said Black wore a mask to cover her face when she brought a hand-written note into the bank that read, “This is an arm (sic) robbery” and demanded cash from the teller. Black then got into a silver car allegedly driven by Jamie L. Burnfield and the two women left the area, police said. Police arrested Burnfield, 38, of 307 Prison Road, Morgan Township, in January and she is currently awaiting trial on one count of criminal conspiracy.
Black, 25, of 224 Washington St., was arrested April 29 and held for court Wednesday by District Judge Louis Dayich on charges of robbery, criminal conspiracy, receiving stolen property, simple assault and harassment. She remains in Greene County jail on $50,000 cash bond.
Police said Black later told a friend she also burglarized a bus garage in Franklin Township two months before the bank robbery and stole a safe. Police said Black entered Fox’s Bus Garage through a window in the early hours of Jan. 7, 2013, and used a dolly to remove a safe inside. Investigators estimated $25,000 was inside the safe at the time.
Court records indicate Black was employed as a bus driver for Fox’s at the time of the burglary, but she was terminated in February 2013, after allegedly failing a drug test. During an interview last week following her arrest on the armed robbery charges, investigators said she admitted to stealing the safe, although she remembered taking only $11,000 from inside.
Police said Black confessed to committing the robbery and burglary because she was “hooked on heroin.”
State police on Tuesday filed additional charges of burglary, theft and criminal mischief in connection to the bus garage break-in, although Black has not yet been arraigned in that case.