A man who claimed to have a bomb at a McAllen bank Monday was charged with aggravated robbery and possession of a controlled substance following his arrest.
According to police reports, Orlando Jose Ornellas entered the Chase Bank at 5601 N. 10th St. in McAllen just before 1 p.m. Monday. He approached a bank employee and asked for a pen and paper to write. The employee handed Ornellas a pen and a yellow Post-it note and watched him take a seat on a lounge chair before he began writing on the note.
Ornellas then approached one of the teller windows and handed the yellow Post-it note to her. He placed a black colored backpack on the floor in front of him as the teller read the note she’d just been handed.
The note read, “Give me $300 bomb in bag,” according to police reports.
The teller asked Ornellas to wait a moment and tried to trigger the bank’s alarm. Unfortunately, the woman was not familiar with the alarm at that particular teller window because she was filling in for another bank teller who had stepped away for a few minutes, the complaint said.
The woman told police that “she walked to her motor teller window where she was working for the day and pressed the hold up alarm to activate the call for the Police from that area,” one police report read.
When she returned to the teller window where Ornellas had been waiting, he had left the teller area and possibly the bank.
McAllen police arrived at 12:58 p.m. One of the responding officers was given a description of Ornellas, who’d been wearing gray warmups and black shoes.
The officer found Ornellas sitting near the east side entrance of the bank.
“Mr. Ornellas was alerted to my presence and stood up from the seated position and faced me,” the report read. “With my [sic] duty weapon drawn and pointed at him, I ordered Mr. Ornellas to get to the ground face down with his hands on his back.”
“ As Mr. Ornellas was on his back I handcuffed him and sat him up,” the narrative continued. “As Mr. Ornellas was sitting down and handcuffed, I asked him why the Police were called to the location and he responded to me, ‘I tried to rob a bank.’”
The police officer also noticed a yellow Post-it note on the ground near the area where Ornellas had been sitting. It was also determined that Ornellas did not in fact have a bomb or any other weapons at the time of his arrest.
According to the affidavit, Ornellas also told police he had inappropriately touched two individuals in an unrelated incident.
“Ornellas stated that he inappropriately touched two females while he worked at the Boys and Girls Club,” the affidavit read. “Ornelas went into further detail about the incidents.”
At the jail, officers conducted a secondary search of Ornellas and found “a clear vape” that was determined to contain tetrahydrocannabinols, an illegal narcotic.
He remained jailed Wednesday in the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Center on a total of $110,000 in bonds, records show.
