A foiled bank robbery attempt Thursday morning ended with the arrest of a man linked to 13 bank robberies dating back to July of 2000.

Twenty-nine-year-old Roosevelt L. Erving of Lincoln is under arrest.

Police say that Erving hit the Wells Fargo Bank branch at 6600 O Street Thursday morning.

Investigators say Erving abducted a Wells Fargo employee arriving for work at about 7:15 a.m. The employee was forced to enter the bank where a second employee was also accosted. The would-be robber then restrained both employees on chairs.

Approximately 35 minutes after all of this began, Lincoln Police Officer Scott Arnold was conducting a check of the business when he noticed unusual activity and called for additional units.

At the same time, a man plowing snow in the bank parking lot also called 911 to report the activity.

Backup officers arrived and took up positions covering the building exits.

The robber, apparently aware of the police activity outside, broke out a window on the south side of the building and ran.

He headed south across O Street and into the path of Detective Sgt. Ken Koziol who then took Roosevelt Erving into custody at gunpoint at 8:07 a.m.

Rolling the Dice
What Roosevelt Erving could not have known was that Lincoln police had just launched at eight-day special project at 4:00 o'clock Thursday morning aimed directly at this series of bank robberies.

The project, nicknamed Rolling the Dice, involved 30 Lincoln Police Officers , five Nebraska State Patrol troopers, four FBI agents, three Lancaster County Sheriff’s deputies, one Seward County Sheriff’s deputy, one Otoe County Sheriff’s deputy, and one Milford police officer.

This project was targeted at specific locations where the Lincoln police department’s crime analysts had determined the next robbery was most likely to occur. As a result, several officers, including members of the LPD SWAT team, were in the immediate area.