Chocowinity Police charge bank robbery suspect

Published 3:38 pm Thursday, July 18, 2019

CHOCOWINITY — The Chocowinity Police Department, aided by the Wake County Sheriff’s Office, has charged a suspect in a late-May bank robbery in Chocowinity.

Michael Donell Moore, 26, of Ridgewood Drive in Raleigh, was charged Thursday with robbery with a dangerous weapon and making a false bomb report in a public building.

The charges date back to a bank robbery at CresCom Bank branch in Chocowinity on the morning of May 28. At about 10:15 a.m., a suspect walked into the bank dressed in a full-body paint suit, white mask and sunglasses and demanded money from the teller.

“The note that he passed to the teller made reference to a bomb,” Chocowinity Police Department Chief Ralph Whitehurst said.

Whitehurst credited tips from the public for helping identify Moore after the CPD released surveillance images to local media outlets and social media.

“He was in the bank about eight days prior to the robbery,” Whitehurst said. “That was that first picture that we released to identify him. We had all kinds of calls then on his identity, where he was staying and things of that nature.”

According to a release from the CPD, Moore is originally from Beaufort County and the Chocowinity area and has since moved to Raleigh. The WCSO executed several search warrants on Moore’s house Thursday, along with a warrant for his arrest.

Whitehurst said the robbery remains under investigation. Several agencies, including the FBI, have been involved with looking into the crime.

Moore was processed at the Wake County Magistrates’ Office and placed on a secured $125,000 bond for both the charges.