A 46-year-old man accused of robbing a United Bank branch in Point Marion Borough while wearing a gas mask was arrested early Tuesday morning inside a home in the nearby village of Ronco. Stephen Gaza IV is now facing charges of robbery and terroristic threats after police say he handed a teller a note demanding money and indicated he had a gun.
According to WPXI, the robbery happened around 11 a.m. at the United Bank on Penn Street in Point Marion Borough, a small community along the West Virginia border. Police said Gaza was initially described as wearing a black Steelers baseball hat before later reports identified the gas mask as part of his disguise during the holdup. No one was injured in the incident, and state police troopers took Gaza into custody inside a home in Ronco.
A Familiar Dirt Road in Fayette County
The arrest location is no coincidence for anyone who remembers Gaza's criminal history. Back in June 2015, state police pursued Gaza from South Union Township into German Township and captured him on a dirt road off Fells Road in that same village of Ronco, according to CBS News. More than a decade later, troopers found him hiding in the same rural pocket of Fayette County.
That 2015 spree also involved a United Bank branch in Uniontown, at the 100-block of Walnut Hill Road, along with a PNC Bank in Rostraver and a Huntington Bank in Morgantown, West Virginia. CBS News reported that Gaza wielded a realistic pellet gun during those robberies, and tellers who lived through the ordeal reported long-term emotional trauma after believing the weapon was real.
A Disturbing Confession From a Decade Ago
During police questioning after his 2015 arrest, Gaza confessed that the robberies were meant to raise travel money for an escape plan tied to an alleged plot to kill his pregnant girlfriend, per CBS News' reporting at the time. State police said Gaza had also planned to use his father's shotgun before fleeing the area. Gaza pleaded guilty in federal court to charges stemming from the eight-day, multi-state spree.
In January 2016, Gaza was sentenced in federal court to 75 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release, as reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That sentence closed out a case that had rattled bank employees across western Pennsylvania and West Virginia during the summer of 2015.
Where Point Marion Sits and What Gaza Could Face
Point Marion Borough sits at the confluence of the Monongahela and Cheat rivers, less than one mile north of West Virginia, and is home to roughly 1,152 residents, according to mapping data from RandyMajors.org Maps. It's a small, tight-knit border community not accustomed to bank heists making national headlines.
Under Pennsylvania law, robbery involving threats or intimidation of immediate serious bodily injury is charged as a felony of the first degree, punishable by up to 20 years in state prison and fines as high as $25,000, according to Ciccarelli Law Offices. Separately, terroristic threats can be charged as third-degree felonies, depending on the specific statutory subsection and circumstances, according to DeLuce Law.
Bank Robberies Are Rare, But Rarely Get Away With It
Nationally, bank robbery has become an increasingly uncommon crime. FBI Bank Crime Statistics for 2023 recorded just 1,362 federal bank crime violations nationwide, an 83% drop from the peak of 9,540 recorded in 1992, according to the FBI. The figures illustrate the decline in reported bank crime.
The FBI tracks bank robberies and general burglaries separately. This week in Fayette County, Gaza was arrested after the Point Marion robbery. Broader FBI figures also include robbery and violent-crime statistics.
