[4/22/03]Two suspects in an attempted bank robbery Monday remained free this morning, Vicksburg Police said.

A woman who entered Britton & Koontz First National Bank, 2150 S. Frontage Road, about 10:30 a.m. Monday apparently panicked after passing a note to a teller and left before receiving any money, Patrolman Bo McLeod said.

“She made a motion as if she had a gun,” McLeod said, adding that no one in the bank actually saw a gun.

Police described the woman suspect as white with a pale complexion, in her mid- to late 30s, tall and of medium to heavy build. She was wearing blue jeans, a turquoise shirt, a black baseball cap and sunglasses, McLeod said.

“When the teller hesitated, the suspect became nervous and left the bank,” a police statement said. The woman escaped to a maroon 1999 Mercury Sable bearing Louisiana license plate number JRC 398 which was parked behind the nearby former branch of BancorpSouth at 2086 S. Frontage Road. The driver of the getaway car was described as an older white man.

Bank employees declined to comment.

The most recent bank robbery in Vicksburg happened June 12, 2001, Vicksburg Police spokesman Fran Jeffers said. Then, employees of Vicksburg Railroad Credit Union, 900 Belmont St., said their facility was robbed by a white man saying he had a bomb.

Two other robberies, each using a purported bomb, were reported, one four days earlier in Livingston, Ala., and one three days later in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Police believed the same person was responsible for all three, and that man has been arrested in another state, Vicksburg Police Chief of Detectives Mark Culbertson said this morning. Jeffers did not provide the man’s name, and said she did not know whether local charges were to be brought against him.

Several bank robberies have occurred recently in Jackson, but Jeffers said Vicksburg Police have no reason to believe the Vicksburg attempt was related.

“We’ve had four in the past five or six weeks, but (suspects in) three of the four have been apprehended,” Jackson Police spokesman Robert Graham said. He added that, in the robbery that remains unsolved, police have two suspects, both men.