EUFAULA, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma authorities say they are trying to determine if the suspect in a fatal bank robbery in Eufaula is the same assailant in a convenience store robbery in Texas.
The Tulsa World reports that police in Irving, Texas, issued a news release and surveillance footage Friday depicting a man matching the description of Cedric Lamont Norris walking into a convenience store Jan. 19 around midnight and beating the store clerk before stealing his vehicle.
The release says the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation contacted Irving police regarding the vehicle, which may have been the same car Oklahoma authorities chased after the robbery at the Bank of Eufaula on Thursday. The bank’s president and CEO, Randy Peterson, was fatally shot in the robbery.
The FBI says Norris tried to take bank employee Becky Howell hostage, but she resisted and Norris shot her. Authorities say bank customer Julie Huff was injured after being taken hostage and forced into the vehicle that police eventually caught up to. Both women are expected to survive their injuries.
Authorities say the 39-year-old Norris died during a shootout with police following the robbery.
Court records indicate Norris had been allowed to leave a Texas prison by mistake in March 2012 despite still needing to complete prison sentences of 60 years and 10 years in Oklahoma. He was released on mandatory supervision that would have ended in February 2017.
Norris was arrested in February 2005 in Dallas after jewelry store robberies in Oklahoma and Texas. In December of that year, he was moved to Tulsa County and then Creek County, both in Oklahoma, for trials.
Records show he was picked up from the Tulsa County jail in 2007, after the trials, and returned to Texas to serve prison time there.
Texas corrections officials said they don’t have any notices from Oklahoma that would have prevented his release.