David Vance (July 15, 2011)



Earl Coleman was calm as he described in court Thursday a gun battle that unfolded when three masked robbers stormed the Chatham neighborhood bank where he worked as a security guard in May 2007.


"As soon as I stepped from behind that partition, they started firing," Coleman said on the witness stand in U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall's courtroom.


Coleman, a veteran of more than a decade at the Illinois Service Federal Savings and Loan at 87th Street and King Drive, testified he dropped to the floor as one robber leaped over a teller counter and brandished a .357 Smith & Wesson. With both hands on his weapon, Coleman said, he fired six shots at the robbers before they fled the bank with only a teller drawer containing $6,875.







A teller, Tramaine Gibson, 23, was killed, while Coleman and a customer, Dorothy Sanders, a retired teacher, were wounded. Sanders also testified Thursday at the trial of David Vance, who is charged with fatally shooting Gibson after he was unable to unlock the bank vault. Two robbers previously pleaded guilty.


Sanders said she was rising from a seat in the branch manager's cubicle when she saw a man run by and realized a bank robbery was under way. Sanders said she stuck her wallet inside her bra for safekeeping.


"I started standing up, getting ready to go out the door," she told the jury. "Next thing I knew, I was in the ambulance."


Sanders spoke softly as she described the gunshot wounds to her left arm and the bullets that ended up lodged in her right side.


Coleman said he first realized the bank was being robbed when one of the masked men jumped over the teller counter.


"The only way I knew they were armed was when they started shooting at me," Coleman said as prosecutors displayed an enlarged surveillance photo of the gunmen on a screen.


Coleman was shot once each in the chest and left leg.


Vance's attorney Paul Brayman asked Coleman if he remembered telling FBI agents after the shootout that he had shot one of the robbers.


"Four years ago? No, I cannot remember," Coleman said. "I was heavily sedated after having been shot twice."