Leprechaun had better luck as Santa
Cops say slain robber hit bank just before Christmas, dressed as St. Nick
GALLATIN, Tenn. - The man who staged a St. Patrick's Day bank robbery in a leprechaun costume and died during a police shoot-out also held up a bank three days before Christmas in a Santa suit, police said yesterday.
Investigators in this Nashville suburb said that information from the FBI linked David Christopher Cotton, 20, of Brentwood, to the December robbery.
FBI Supervisor Special Agent Scott Augenbaum told the Associated Press that investigators had found a Santa suit at Cotton's home and that the robber made similar comments during both heists.
The man police identified as the getaway driver, Western Kentucky University student Jonathan Ryan Skinner, 20, also was killed. Police said they think that Cotton shot himself to death as officers surrounded the two in a field after a car and foot chase.
Patrol-car video of the chase released yesterday shows one of the suspects leaning out the passenger window of the getaway car and firing several shots at police on the street of a subdivision.
At least one round strikes the front of the car, kicking up a shower of metal and glass. Police said that the shots disabled the vehicle, and the video shows a string of other police cars giving chase.
Police said that the two ditched their vehicle and ran into a field near a subdivision, where they died.
A friend of Cotton's family, Rose Horton, said that his parents were grieving and requested privacy. The recording on the answering machine for Albert and Annette Cotton referred calls to Horton.
"They loved their son as much as any parents love their children," she said. "They are thankful that no bystanders were hurt and they give their condolences to the family of the other man."
On his Web site Cotton described himself as "always looking for a new adventure."
A YouTube video shows Cotton goofing around with a device he claims to have invented to measure whether someone is putting out good or bad vibes. He repeatedly points the device at himself and gets a "bad vibe" reading.
Officers don't know how the two men were acquainted, police Lt. Kate Novitsky said.
Bob Skipper, director of Western Kentucky University media relations, confirmed that Skinner had been a junior majoring in meteorology at the college in Bowling Green, Ky., about 80 miles north of Nashville. He said that Skinner also was from the Nashville suburb of Brentwood. A message left on a university listing for Skinner was not immediately returned.
First State Bank was held up Wednesday afternoon by a man who wore a St. Patrick's Day costume and carried a large-caliber pistol, said Sgt. Bill Storment, a spokesman for the Gallatin Police Department.
Sharon Riehemann, manager of the Fifth Third Bank next door, said that the man - wearing a green top hat, vest and shorts and a fake brown beard and wig - had come into her bank a few minutes before the robbery, but then left.
He walked toward the other bank, and then a couple of minutes later he ran out of the bank with a blue bag in his hands, Riehemann said.
No one at the bank was injured.
On Dec. 22, a man dressed in a Santa suit - including hat, beard and mustache - held up a SunTrust Bank in Nashville, demanding money from the teller at gunpoint.