Ely
FORT WAYNE — A Van Wert County man was sentenced Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana to nearly six years in prison for a string of bank robberies, including one at Chase Bank in Lima, that were committed almost two years ago.
Bart Ely, 71, of Ohio City, was sentenced for robbing the First Source Bank in Bluffton, Indiana, of $400 on June 4, 2021. According to court documents, Ely robbed or attempted to rob banks in Bluffton and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and in Tipp City, Troy, Dublin, Lima and Englewood in Ohio during a span of just over two weeks in the summer of 2021.
In total he took approximately $8,000 from those robberies, court documents said.
The Lima incident occurred June 12 when Ely entered Chase Bank at 1799 Harding Highway and demanded money. According to a statement at the time from the Allen County Sheriff’s Office, “bank employees said an unknown white male entered the business wearing a camouflage hat, black mask and an Ohio State T-shirt. He reportedly approached a bank teller with a note demanding money and then fled the area with an undisclosed amount of money.” It was later determined that Ely made off with slightly more than $3,000.
Investigators said all robberies were conducted in a similar manner where, with the exception of the one in Dublin, Ely would provide a note to the teller stating “something to the effect of people watching the bank employee’s home and to provide money.”
His final bank robbery happened in Englewood on June 22, 2021, and police then traced him to a hotel in West Chester, investigators said. Ely was apprehended following that evening in a motel room in West Chester, where law enforcement officers found him lying on the floor bleeding from multiple self-inflicted knife wounds.
According to court documents, Ely’s girlfriend told investigators that she believed the robber was Ely and that he was addicted to crack cocaine and could not beat his addiction.
