Casey Widman charged with felony count stemming from a clumsy bank robbery

A bank robbery is one of those crimes that doesn’t make any sense. Bank tellers usually don’t carry more than a few thousand dollars in cash, at most, behind the counter. 

There are cameras everywhere in and around the bank. And when police officers get the call about a bank robbery, they don’t wait around to respond to the call. 

A robber faces a high risk of several years in prison for what’s usually a pretty small payoff.

Casey Widman, a 58-year-old Kansas City man, will have his case go to a grand jury after being charged with a felony count of robbing a Bank Midwest location near 63rd Street and Brookside Boulevard. Widman was picked up by authorities on New Year’s Eve in a robbery that made off with less than a thousand dollars.

Federal prosecutors believe that Widman brandished a pellet gun at a teller counter at about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday, saying he wanted “all fifties and hundreds.”

He got only a few of either, plus at least a some fives and ones. In all, Widman allegedly stole $838 from Bank Midwest before hightailing it out of the Brookside bank.

Police got a call that the suspect hopped in a blue Ford Taurus that had been near the bank just before the robbery. An officer spotted the Taurus and followed it until it pulled over at a gas station. There, the officer took Widman and two others in the car into custody. An officer found $389 stuffed in the sole of his boot. The two others in the car haven’t been charged.

The charges against Widman are only accusations that haven’t yet been tested in court.

This isn’t Widman’s first tangle with the law. He was sentenced to 77 months in prison in California in 1994 on bank robbery charges there.

For his latest accusation, Widman faces up to 20 years in prison. For $838.