Cops: S.D. Prison Escapee Arrested In Prior Lake After Robbing 3 Banks
ROSEVILLE, Minn. (WCCO) -- It began with Friday's prison break in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a weekend bank robbery in Roseville soon followed.
That run from capture is now over for 46-year-old Clint Eldeen after Prior Lake police caught him leaving a Twin Cities area casino at 3:17 a.m. Wednesday.
Eldeen had been serving time in a minimum security prison in Sioux Falls when he managed to escape late Friday evening.
Investigators quickly identified Eldeen as the person who held up the Bremer Bank on West County Road B2 in Roseville, walking out with a fistful of cash on Saturday morning.
Back in 2000, as Eldeen was being escorted into a Sioux Falls courtroom, he had a blunt message for a KELO-TV news crew about life in crime.
"I'd just like to tell anybody that's out there watching me, if you do drugs, if you do cocaine, this is where you're going to end up," Eldeen said.
Police say Eldeen stole a Pizza Hut delivery car following the prison break Friday and drove to Minnesota. Around 9:40 a.m. Saturday, Roseville police were notified of a bank robbery in progress.
"I don't think he really had a plan, in a sense that he made really no attempt to hide his identity like most robbers do," Lieutenant Lorne Rosand said. "He just basically dropped the hat a little bit, ran out holding the money in his hand."
Clear images of the bank robbery quickly identified Eldeen as the perpetrator. Still, his Twin Cities crime spree wasn't over.
Eldeen is now suspected in at least two other heists, including Tuesday's holdup of a Wells Fargo Bank in Richfield as well as the attempted robbery of a TCF Bank just a couple miles east.
Eldeen made his mistake when he decided to do some gambling at Mystic Lake Casino in Prior Lake.
"Mr. Eldeen was noticed by an alert security guard who called the Prior Lake Police Department," FBI spokesman Kyle Loven said. "So it was really a team effort when it comes to the apprehension of Eldeen in this instance."
Fifteen years after Eldeen spoke his mind to a reporter, he is once again returning to the life he claimed he did not want.
That is when Eldeen was heard saying, "I didn't wake up, you know, one day and decide, 'Hey, I want to be a career criminal and go to prison over and over again and be addicted to a white, powder substance.'"
Along with a wad of cash at the time of his capture -- presumably money taken in one of the bank robberies -- police say Eldeen also had a supply of narcotics in his possession.