Police said Thursday that two men who have been charged with robbing a Waterville bank and Fairfield convenience store this week are transients who have been living in Waterville.
Isaac Howard Sterling, 23, and Trevor R. Miller, 24, were charged with Class B robbery and Class C criminal conspiracy, and each was being held Thursday on $10,000 bail, according to Chief William Bonney of the Waterville Police Department.
Trevor R. Miller Courtesy photo
A robbery at Bangor Savings Bank at 366 Main St. in Waterville occurred Tuesday, just before the bank was to close at 5 p.m. A lone person passed a threatening note to a teller, and was able to get away with an undisclosed amount of cash, according to Bonney.
Police from Waterville, Winslow and Fairfield responded to the area, but did not locate the suspect, who was described as 5 feet 9 inches tall and 160 to 170 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.
Then, shortly before 2 a.m. Wednesday, the Circle K at 149 Norridgewock Road in Fairfield was robbed by a person whom law enforcement officials believed to be the same suspect involved in the Bangor Savings Bank robbery. That suspect left with an undisclosed amount of cash, Bonney said.
As Waterville and Fairfield police were investigating the robberies, they received a tip Wednesday that a suspect had been seen on Front Street in Waterville and left the area in a vehicle.
“As officers converged on the area, further information was received that the suspect was leaving in a vehicle,” Bonney said Thursday in a statement to the news media. “Officers located the vehicle in the parking lot of the old Boys and Girls Club on Main Place and detained Isaac Sterling and Trevor Miller.”
Sterling was identified as the person who entered the Waterville bank and Fairfield convenience store, and Miller was his getaway driver, according to Bonney.
“It is incredibly important for the safety and well-being of the community to quickly resolve these crimes and avoid further traumatization and innocent victims,” Bonney said in the statement.
Isaac Howard Sterling Courtesy photo
Fairfield police assisted in the investigation, and Chief Tom Gould said it moved quickly.
“Clearing these cases in less than 24 hours is a credit to the hard work put in by all of our investigators,” Gould said.
The same Bangor Savings Bank was robbed Feb. 12, 2019, by a man brandishing a handgun, who then ran across four lanes of traffic on upper Main Street and into the Ming Lee Chinese Restaurant parking lot, slipped on the ice and found himself face to face with an agent from the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Task Force, who happened to be parked there.
When the robber fell, the money and gun he had stashed inside his jacket pocket spilled onto the parking lot, and the money was swept across the parking lot by the wind, officials said at the time.
The robber, Jason M. Mackenrodt, 37, of Waterville, later pleaded guilty to robbery and theft charges and was sentenced to five years in prison.
The robbery at Circle K in Fairfield was the third to have occurred there since May 2022.
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