crimes and misdemeanors

There’s Another ‘Bouquet Bandit’ on the Loose in New York City

Red rose bouquet.
How to steal hearts, and dolla dolla bills. Photo: Andrei Tchernov/iStockphoto

When you think about it, flowers are the perfect thing to bring to a crime you’re about to commit. How better to say you’re sorry in advance than with a bouquet of something fresh and sweet-smelling? Perhaps that’s why an unidentified man brought a “fancy” arrangement with him into the Banco Popular on Columbus and 96th Street yesterday, where he demanded $1,100 from the female teller — a crime that recalls a similar incident last year, when a bank robber named Edward Pemberton was finally apprehended after he left his fingerprints on the pink tissue wrapping the flowers, which he’d left behind. But yesterday’s bouquet bandit, as the Post has dubbed him, left nothing: not the tissue paper, not the flowers, not so much as a phone number where the teller could call up the one nice, decent guy who thought to bring her flowers in ages.

There’s Another ‘Bouquet Bandit’ on the Loose