Crime & Safety

Robber Hits Brookfield Bank, Is Captured in Tosa After Wild Chase

Milwaukee man threatens to blow up Brookfield bank with bomb and gets away, but he's quickly tracked down and then tailed into Wauwatosa.

A robber got away Wednesday after hitting a Brookfield Tri-City National Bank branch, but within an hour and a half police had figured out who he was, found him, tailed him in a long, wild chase, and finally cornered and corralled him in Wauwatosa.

Brookfield police also didn't fool around in seeking charges.

Chrisopher Daniel-Noel Selby, 30, of Milwaukee is already facing two felony and one misdemeanor counts filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court: Robbery with threat of force, fleeing an officer and theft. Selby could get 10 to 15 years in prison on the robbery charge alone, and is being held on $150,000 bail.

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Selby said he would blow up the bank with a bomb to get his money.

'Tic toc tic toc'

At 3:38 p.m. Wednesday, police say, Selby entered the Tri-City branch office inside Pick ‘n Save, 15170 W. Greenfield Ave. He went to a teller, claimed he had a bomb set to go off and set a small black package on the counter.

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He gave the teller a note that said, “This is a heist, no die (sic) packs, tic toc tic toc.”

The teller did, however, put dye packs along with cash in the sack Selby pushed at her. Selby then simply walked out of the store.

Alarms were sounded, but police couldn't find the robber and didn't have an eyewitness vehicle description to go on.

Bank employees did a great job, though, Brookfield police said, of quickly uploading surveillance video of the robbery to other Tri-City branches and to local law enforcement agencies, with an urgent alert to take a look.

Within minutes, an employee at a Tri-City branch in West Allis and a Brookfield police detective responded that they recognized the robber as Selby.

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Brookfield police then ran a search of all of addresses associated with Selby and fanned out to search for him.

"At one of them, an officer saw him behind a residence on Tulane Avenue in Brookfield, standing next to a burn bin," said Brookfield Police Capt. Jim Adlam. "He took off, and we gave chase."

The pursuit begins

And some chase it was. The Brookfield officer who spotted Selby called in and said he was pursuing a white minivan, and soon officers from all over were zeroing in. Selby got onto I-94 and sped east, then got off in West Allis, where there are several addresses associated with him.

Selby, police said, ended up on a dead-end gravel road off Theo Trecker Way, but somehow spun around and got out of the trap and got onto 116th Street and Curtis Road, going north.

By this time, Brookfield and West Allis police and Milwaukee County deputies were all involved in the chase, and now Wauwatosa police were alerted, too.

Somehow, Selby managed to get onto the freeway, heading north on Hwy. 45 at high speed. But Selby made a big mistake in his escape routing. He ran into heavy congestion as he approached heavy Zoo Interchange construction around Watertown Plank Road.

Selby tried to get off at the Watertown Plank ramp, but found himself stalled, abandoned his car and fled on foot.

There was a host of Brookfield and other officers behind him, and eight Wauwatosa officers were converging on all other sides.

It was left to the original Brookfield patrol officer who spotted and kept tailing him, though, to bring Selby to ground. The dogged officer ripped open his hand scaling a construction fence but kept up and put the collar on Selby in the middle of the UWM Innovation Campus construction zone on the Milwaukee County Grounds.

"We took him in," Capt. Adlam said, "and he confessed."


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