Woonsocket Police Detective Robert Morrow points in the direction two robbery suspects are believed to have fled while two other detectives look on outside the Sovereign Bank branch on Social Street Friday.  Call photo/Ernest A. Brown

By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — Two 18-year-old Massachusetts men and a 17-year-old male were arrested Friday in connection with a late-morning robbery of the Sovereign Bank on Social Street. 

Police said that Richard Duest of Everett, Mass., and Evan Aubrey of Attleboro were both charged with second-degree robbery and conspiracy. The 17-year-old, whose name was not released because he is a juvenile, was booked on the same charges.
At 11:28 a.m. Friday, police received a report of a robbery perpetrated by two males. Soon after, the bank was shut down as uniformed police officers questioned witnesses inside the bank and in the parking lot.
Witnesses told police that one of the men passed a note demanding money from a teller. No weapons were shown and no one was injured in the incident.
Plainclothes detectives from the Police Department’s Bureau of Criminal Identification — the evidence-gathering arm of the police department — were later seen dusting a counter inside the bank where deposit slips are filled out, apparently in search of fingerprints.
An elderly man sitting in his car in the parking lot of the bank shortly after the robbery told a reporter he saw two suspects flee the bank on foot, heading toward Cummings Way.
The man said he was waiting for his wife, who was in the bank at the time of the robbery, and who was still inside after police arrived.
The man described the suspects as young adult males, both white and about 6 feet tall. “All’s I know is when they came out, I knew something was wrong,” the man said. “They took off like lightning.”
Police later confirmed that an undisclosed amount of cash was turned over to the suspects, who ran from the bank toward the area of Cumberland and Clinton streets. “Woonsocket Police uniform officers and detective units saturated the area in search for the suspects,” police reported in a statement issued Friday night.
A spokesman for the Cumberland Police Department said city police picked up three suspects from the custody of that town’s department about two hours after the robbery.
On Friday night, Woonsocket authorities announced that Cumberland Police Officer Manuel Nunes, who was patrolling in the Highland Industrial Park on the city line, had heard police transmissions about the robbery and began monitoring the area of Mendon Road and Route 99 as a possible escape route for the suspects.
City police said Nunes’ hunch paid off. The officer reportedly spotted a car with three occupants leaving Woonsocket on Mendon Road and driving erratically. Nunes stopped the vehicle for the moving violations.
“The occupants’ actions and demeanor were suspicious and their general descriptions were similar to the bank robbery suspects, so Woonsocket Police was notified of the car stop,” city police said. Woonsocket Police responded and took over the investigation. 
Duest and Aubrey were being held at the Woonsocket police station and were expected to be arraigned before a bail commissioner last night. The 17-year-old was sent to the state Training School in Cranston pending a probable cause hearing.