Man wanted for Bluffton bank robbery arrested in Ohio

A Bluffton man accused of robbing Palmetto State Bank on Jan. 19 has been arrested in Ohio, according to a Bluffton Police Department news release this morning.

Today at 8:20 a.m. Bluffton police received a phone call from an acquaintance of David Everett Mack Jr. who said she wanted to turn Mack in because she feared for her safety. She provided investigators with her address, which was at an apartment complex in Canton, Ohio, the release said.

Investigators from the Bluffton Police Department contacted the Canton Police Department, which went to the address. Canton police located Mack in front of the apartment complex and arrested him without incident, according to the release.

“Mack will be extradited back to Bluffton in the near future,” the release said.

On Jan. 19, according to police, Mack and another man jumped the bank president in the parking lot off Bluffton Road before opening hours, forced him into the bank at gunpoint and bound him with duct tape.

They dismantled the video surveillance system.

They couldn’t get the safe opened, police said, so they ran, taking about $100 from coin trays. Several items including a BB gun were discarded. Police later matched DNA from the discarded items with those in Mack’s Wharf Street home, police said.

Mack faces charges of armed robbery, kidnapping and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, the release said.

The FBI also is seeking federal charges, police have said.