A 55-year-old ex-con was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years behind bars for carrying out a takeover-style bank robbery in Anaheim \u2014 one day after he got out of state prison.<\/p>\n
Eric Walter Gray, who has a lengthy criminal history, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court in October 2025 to a single count of \u201cbank robbery and forced accompaniment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with the prison sentence, Gray was ordered to pay restitution of $10,883, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Police responded at about 4:40 p.m. May 8, 2024, to a report of a bank robbery in progress at a BMO branch at 5401 E. La Palma Ave., between Imperial Highway and Lakeview Avenue, FBI Special Agent Trevor Twitchell wrote in an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint filed in the case.<\/p>\n
Gray, an Orange County resident, loitered in the bank \u201cfor a long time,\u201d telling an employee he was waiting for a ride, Twitchell said. After he returned from a bathroom, Gray leaped a teller counter, announced he had a gun and stole more than $2,000 in cash from two teller drawers, the FBI agent stated.<\/p>\n
Gray stuffed the cash in his pockets and forced the bank manager and two other employees into a storage room, preventing the victims from leaving by blocking and barricading the door, according to Twitchell.<\/p>\n
After a while he let the two employees go, keeping the bank manager confined for about an hour, the agent said.<\/p>\n
Gray eventually surrendered to police.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile in custody at the Anaheim Police Department, Gray was found to have hidden cash and narcotics within his rectal cavity,\u201d Twitchell said.<\/p>\n
Police suspected he had more hidden in him, so they took him to a hospital for a CT scan, where he \u201crepeatedly attempted to escape and fought with officers, resulting in multiple injuries to the officers involved,\u201d the agent wrote in the affidavit.<\/p>\n
Court papers show Gray has a criminal history that includes grand theft auto, robbery, sexual battery and narcotics-related offenses.<\/p>\n
He had been released from San Quentin state prison on May 7, 2024 \u2014 a day before the Anaheim heist, Twitchell said.<\/p>\n
In the previous case, Gray was sentenced to two years in prison while on parole in 2023 for failure to register as a sex offender and two years for second-degree robbery, to be served concurrently, court papers show. He received more than a year\u2019s credit for time served while awaiting sentencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, defendant\u2019s crimes appear to be growing more serious, not less serious, as he ages,\u201d according to the government\u2019s sentencing papers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 55-year-old ex-con was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years behind bars for carrying out a takeover-style bank robbery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,9261,82951,2901,2480,1628,82952],"class_list":{"0":"post-173988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-bank","12":"tag-ex-con","13":"tag-prison","14":"tag-robbery","15":"tag-sentenced","16":"tag-takeover-style"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}