Man charged in bank holdups

A 42-year-old man has been charged with a series of bank robberies in Baltimore on Monday morning - holding up two downtown banks and trying to rob a third within a span of three hours, a city police spokesman said yesterday.

Lamont E. Brown of the 300 block of E. Lanvale St. was charged with three counts of bank robbery and is being held at the Baltimore City Detention Center.

Sterling Clifford, a police spokesman, said an officer monitoring live surveillance camera feeds saw a man walking along Commerce Street late Monday afternoon, matched his picture with one taken at a bank and radioed officers to make the arrest.

"We closed down a bank robbery pattern in one day," Clifford said.

The spokesman said the robberies were committed between 9 a.m. and noon by a man who implied he had a weapon. Clifford would not say whether police recovered any money.

The banks robbed were the M&T Bank in the 400 block of E. Pratt St. and the Provident Bank in the 100 block of E. Lexington St. The attempted robbery occurred at the Wachovia Bank in the first block of St. Paul St.

Clifford said the spate of robberies "is a little unusual but not unheard of."