The woman accused in a spree of carjackings and bank heists was captured Wednesday after police said she tried to rob another bank. Twenty-six-year-old Stephanie Schwab — dubbed by some news media as “The Blond Bandit — was arrested after police followed her on the Capital Beltway from Virginia into Maryland, police said. She was captured shortly after crashing her getaway vehicle off Interstate 495 near Old Georgetown Road, police said.
For the past two weeks, police have been looking for the 5-foot-3, green-eyed blonde. Schwab was wanted in two bank robberies in Virginia and two carjackings in Virginia and Maryland. Law enforcement sources said she has ties to the MS-13 Hispanic street gang.
At about 1 p.m. Wednesday, Fairfax County police responded to a robbery at BB&T bank in McLean. Dispatchers quickly broadcast a lookout for the suspect described as a “small blond female” driving a blue sport utility vehicle.
“When I heard that, I thought it had to be her,” said Fairfax police spokesman Officer Don Gotthardt.
Shortly after the lookout was issued, one of the responding officers saw a blond woman driving a blue SUV on the Inner Loop of Interstate 495 heading toward Maryland, police said.
The officer followed but kept his lights and sirens off, Gotthardt said. Police units from Montgomery County and Fairfax began to head to the scene.
As the woman exited on Old Georgetown Road, the officer in the trail car said, “I think she knows I’m behind her,” Gotthardt said.
The suspect vehicle crashed shortly after that, and Schwab fled on foot. She was quickly taken into custody.
She was taken back to Fairfax County, and federal authorities will take over the case.
On Thanksgiving Day, police said Schwab hitched a ride from Manassas to a grocery store in Baltimore County. When the driver stopped, Schwab pulled a knife, cut the woman in the hand and fled.
Schwab was already being sought in a Fairfax County carjacking and for bank robberies in Fairfax and Prince William counties.
