Man who robbed bank with fireworks ‘bomb’ strapped to chest gets 2 years in federal prison

Jason Bradley’s sad-sack robbery of a Lombard bank with a fake bomb fashioned from grocery store fireworks strapped to his chest may seem like a bad Hollywood script, but it had some terrible real-world consequences.

The teller he approached on the afternoon of Oct. 4, 2021, and threatened with death said in a statement read in court Tuesday that she’s still traumatized, not only by the event but how it left her unable to be present emotionally for her mother, who died of an unrelated illness less than a week later.

Bradley’s wife testified she’s been wracked with guilt over missing the obvious signs of her husband’s declining mental illness and substance abuse, recalling how she’d already made the decision to leave him when she got the startling phone call from the FBI saying Bradley was under arrest.

Their children, now 6 and 3, have had to wonder why their dad is no longer home, destined, as Bradley’s lawyer told the court, to one day be “Googling their father’s name and find out that he committed a bank robbery.”

And finally, on Tuesday, Bradley learned is own consequence: Two years in federal prison.

In rejecting a call for a sentence of time served, U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama told Bradley, 38, his actions at the West Suburban Bank on North Main Street that day were serious and could have led to catastrophic consequences for the bank employees, customers and responding law enforcement.

“Not only did you put yourself in harm’s way, but you also put others in danger,” Valderrama said in the videoconference hearing. The judge also said he was troubled by a drunken-driving arrest Bradley picked up while on bond just days away from his previously scheduled sentencing hearing.

The sentencing ended one of the more unusual Chicago-area bank robbery cases in recent years, which began when Bradley, walked into the bank on shortly after 1 p.m. on a Monday wearing a face mask and a sweatshirt concealing fireworks that had been duct-taped to his body to look like a bomb.

Bradley could be seen in surveillance footage as he approached the counter, unzipped his sweatshirt and passed a note to the teller reading, “I need everything from your drawer or WE ALL DIE!!!” according to the criminal charges filed against him in October 2021.

The teller handed over $800 in cash and sounded a silent alarm. Bradley fled in a Chevrolet Cruze that was registered in his name, the charges stated.

A short time later, Bradley texted a photo of the stolen cash to his wife, along with a seemingly exasperated note. “Nobody has been looking for me?” the text read, according to the charges. “Nothing? Wtf.” His wife replied with a shrug emoji.

But it turns out the FBI not only was looking for Bradley, they’d traced his car to their home in Villa Park, where they had him under surveillance for hours.

When Bradley was arrested two hours later as he stepped out on the front porch to smoke a cigarette, he still had $747 from the bank on him, the charges said.

Bradley’s wife, who is the sole owner of the home, gave consent to a search, which turned up the red T-shirt Bradley had been wearing in the surveillance footage as well as empty fireworks wrappers and a roll of duct tape.

Bradley pleaded guilty in May to one count of bank robbery. Sentencing guidelines called for up to about four years and three months behind bars.

In asking for leniency Tuesday, Bradley’s attorney, Mark Sutter, said Bradley was an alcoholic who was experiencing a mental breakdown on the day of the robbery, which he’d intended as potentially a suicide by cop.

Sutter said the “firecrackers” he used to make the fake bomb had been purchased for his kids at a Jewel grocery store.

“He’s not a guy going in and committing an armed robbery,” Sutter said. “He wasn’t there to burn anybody or blow the place up. The impetus behind this was absolutely, unequivocally not to hurt anyone except for (himself).”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan DeMarco, however, asked for about 3 ½ years behind bars, saying the robbery was “particularly violent” as far as the trauma it caused the teller.

“Whether it was a suicide attempt or just a cry for help it was incredibly risky behavior that showed a complete disregard for the safety of others,” DeMarco said.

In a victim-impact statement that DeMarco read in court, the teller wrote that Bradley’s actions changed her life and that she carries “an anger and pain that will never go away.”

She wrote she was working that day like she always did, smiling and making small talk with customers, and was looking forward to helping Bradley when he started “screaming and threatening me that I would die.”

“All I could think about was why? Why me?” she wrote. She was still in shock when her mother came home from the hospital days later and was unable to care for her. Her mother died Oct. 9, five days after the robbery, she said.

As DeMarco read the teller’s letter, Bradley, dressed in orange jail clothes, rocked slightly back and forth and cried, wiping tears form eyes with his sleeve.

In a statement to the court before the sentence was handed down, Bradley said he was “in a very dark place” at the time of the heist, self-medicating with alcohol and in a downward spiral of depression.

“I lost sight of everything important to me,” he said. “ I felt like life would be better for everyone if I wasn’t in it.”

But he insisted he was “not a cruel person” and was “never going to hurt anyone.”

“All I know is I did not rob a bank because I needed money,” Bradley said. “I was desperate. I didn’t have a plan. … I just wanted to die.”

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com