ThisCloud.net

By JOE D’AQUILA
Staff Writer

TRENTON – A city bank was robbed this morning, and police arrested a Bonnie and Clyde duo as suspects almost immediately after the heist.

The bank robbed was the Wachovia branch at Brunswick and North Olden avenues, and a large police presence arrived at the scene shortly after at about 9:30 a.m..

Police said a male suspect entered the bank and approached a teller. While he didn’t display a weapon, he passed her a note implying he had one and demanding money.

The teller complied, handing over an unknown amount of money from her drawer, and the man turned and walked out of the bank, police said.

An off-duty Trenton Police officer, Sgt. Richard Girman, was working in the bank as a security guard at the time of the robbery, police said. As soon as the robber left the building, the teller told Girman what had happened.

Girman ran out of the bank after the robber and saw him enter a vehicle, police said. A police source said Girman also found a witness, a man on a bicycle, who saw the robber run out of the bank while quickly removing his shirt. The witness saw that the getaway car was driven by a woman.

Police said Girman then relayed a description of the suspect and the vehicle over police radio.

Officers from the Tactical Anti-Crime Unit , detectives Aaron Bernstein and Eliezer Ramos, were working a few blocks away, in the area of Rossell Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard, police said. They heard the alert then spotted and stopped a car matching the description.

Driving the car was 21-year-old Kristine Giovannetti and 35-year-old Clemson Gist was a passenger.

Police said Girman made his way to the arrest location and identified the vehicle and Gist, who was found to be in possession of money from the bank robbery.

Both Gist and Giovannetti were taken into custody, and police are in the process of interviewing additional witnesses and reviewing surveillance footage.

Gist is listed in the records of the state Department of Corrections, where it shows he served only one year on a theft charge, but has over a dozen known aliases listed. He was released from state prison in December of last year.

Giovannetti, listed as a 2007 graduate of Notre Dame High School on her facebook page, was said to have developed a drug habit since the death of her father a couple of years ago, according to a relative.