Haddonfield bank robbed as bomb scares clear schools

Pint-size bodies were clustered in the library of Central Elementary School in Haddonfield yesterday morning, listening to a visiting children's author, when the fire alarm went off.

Within 10 minutes, bomb threats had been called in to four borough schools - Haddonfield Memorial High, Haddonfield Middle School, and Elizabeth Haddon Elementary in addition to Central. It triggered evacuations at all.

As police were handling the threats, a man wearing a long, black wig and baseball cap robbed the TD Bank branch at 100 Haddon Ave. shortly before 10 a.m.

It was a routine robbery, officials said. The man handed over a note indicating that he had a weapon. He ran off with an undisclosed amount of money.

At the schools, searches with bomb-sniffing dogs were turning up nothing.

Central students waited out the bomb scare at a nearby church, where they played games to pass the time. In the meanwhile, school officials were notifying parents electronically.

"The faculty did an amazing job . . . at keeping the students calm and entertaining them in a way that kept them from being fearful," said Joanie Wolf, 40, a Central PTA parent who had helped organize the visit by author Margery Cuyler of Princeton. "It was really seamless."

By midday, the bank was open again. Two police cars were parked outside at one point.

Haddonfield High, which was in the middle of midterms, dismissed an hour later than scheduled.

"We've resumed a normal day in the school district," Superintendent Alan Fegley said after 12:30 p.m.

Even as police searched the buildings, the mood remained calm, he said. At Elizabeth Haddon, a music teacher led students in song.

"It was wonderful to see how well things worked," Fegley said.

Students were evacuated after threats came in around 9:30 and began returning a little more than an hour later, he said.

Authorities released pictures of the suspect, taken by bank security cameras. He is described as in his late 20s to early 30s, six feet tall, black, with a medium build. He wore a maroon baseball cap with a black brim and a word across the front, a light-color shirt with colored vertical stripes, and tan pants, according to authorities.

School officials said the bomb threats seemed to have been a diversion for the robbery, but FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver said investigators found nothing to indicate the two were linked.

Anyone with information about the robbery is being asked to call the FBI office in Cherry Hill at 856-795-9556 or Haddonfield police at 856-429-4700.