BC bank robbery: Hostage recalls seeing "guy standing there with an assault rifle"

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Victoria, B.C., resident Shelli Fryer had an 11 a.m. appointment with the manager at the Bank of Montreal on Shelbourne Street in Saanich on Tuesday.

She had never been to that particular branch before.

Two minutes after she sat down, the bank was being robbed.

“(The bank manager) said so calmly, ‘we’re being robbed,'” Fryer said. “And he got a key, and as he got the key, I said, ‘should I get down?’ and he said, ‘just a sec.’ I was going to go by my chair, I was going to crouch by my chair and I look up and in the doorway, there’s a guy standing there with an assault rifle.”

Fryer was one of 22 people who ended up being held hostage in the bank Tuesday morning when the suspects burst in.

Multiple officers from Saanich and Victoria responded to the scene and encountered the armed suspects, which is when gunfire was exchanged.