JANESVILLE — When an elderly woman asked Luke Weimert to give her a ride to a bank in Elysian Wednesday, he had no idea his good deed would result in his arrest at gunpoint.
Weimert thought 70-year-old Sandra Leanne Bathke was going to the bank to withdraw some cash to pay her rent. He was an hour into his interview with investigators before he realized Bathke, who is a tenant in his mother's Janesville apartment building, was accused of robbing the bank.
They were both arrested outside that apartment building at about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday after law enforcement officers swarmed into Janesville. An employee at the bank had followed Weimert and Bathke from Elysian after Bathke allegedly went inside the bank, approached a teller, said she had a gun and demanded money.
While the robbery was taking place, Weimert was waiting in the car.
"When she went inside, she told me she had called the bank yesterday, so it wouldn't take long," Weimert said. "Then Sandra gets in again and says, 'OK. Let's go.'"
As they drove back to Janesville on Elysian Lake Road, Bathke talked calmly talked about the weather and the slippery roads, Weimert said. All she said was, "Oh no," when the officers ordered them out of the car at gunpoint.
"I was lost," Weimert said. "I had no idea what was going on."
Janesville Police Chief David Ulmen was the officer ordering Weimert to the ground. At that point, officers were treating him as a suspect, Ulmen said. The officers also were assuming both suspects were armed.
"The report came in as an armed bank robbery where a handgun was brandished," Ulmen said. "We had to assume they were dangerous to us and the people around us. It was for our own safety and the safety of the general public."
Weimert was eventually brought to Waseca, where he was interviewed by Le Sueur County sheriff's investigators. He told them everything he knew, which didn't include anything about robbing a bank.
All Weimert knew was that his mother, Jody Weimert, had been forced to give Bathke an eviction notice for not paying her rent. When Bathke said she could pay if someone gave her a ride to the bank, Luke Weimert agreed to help.
"As a landlord, I have a lot of crazy stories," Jody Weimert said. "But this one tops them all. I told my boyfriend I'm done. I'm selling the apartment building. I can't do this anymore."
She admits, due to the current economy and real estate market, that's probably not an option.
"I just need to regroup, lick my wounds and clear Luke's name," she said. "If you can't rent to a 70-year-old woman, who can you rent to? The whole situation is sad."
Ulmen agreed. Desperation was a likely factor, he said.
"Quite frankly, this is the craziest bank robbery we've ever dealt with," he said.
