Greg Kreiser just thought he was doing a good deed when he offered Shannon Eric Steckbeck a ride home Monday afternoon.
The two had both been at the local bar in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Steckbeck told Kreiser he was worried about driving himself after he had been drinking, per Lancaster Online. So Kreiser agreed to drive him to his motel a few miles away.
But while they drove, Steckbeck asked Kreiser to stop at Union Community Bank so he could make a quick withdraw, per PennLive. While Kreiser waited outside, Steckbeck entered the bank and demanded the teller hand over cash. He did not display any weapon and no one was hurt, Lancaster Online reports, but he did leave with an undisclosed amount of money.
Steckbeck got into Kreiser’s car, a black Nissan, and they drove on. Before they reached Steckbeck’s motel, he asked Kreiser to drop him off in a shopping center parking lot, telling him he would walk the rest of the way.
As Kreiser drove home himself, he started to notice police cars racing by him in the direction he had just come from.
“Now I’m getting a funny feeling,” he told Lancaster Online.
So Kreiser turned around and went back, stopping to ask police what the problem was. When they informed him that a middle-aged man had walked into the bank and made off with cash, he told them about his interaction with Steckbeck.
Kreiser’s information allowed the police to arrest Steckbeck within an hour. He later confessed to the robbery, and police records indicate he already had warrants for his arrest in a neighboring county, including one incident in which he robbed a bank after telling employees he had a bomb, according to PennLive.
Kreiser, who served in the Army and as a prison guard for Lancaster County, is not being charged for unwittingly serving as an accomplice to robbery, according to police. However, he told Lancaster Online that he has learned his lesson all the same.
“Was I too trusting? Yep. Was I trying to do a good deed? Yep. Will I give a ride to a stranger again? Probably not,” he said.
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