BRANFORD-At approximately 2 p.m. on Wednesday, May 31, a man entered the NewAlliance Bank located at 1026 Main Street, claimed he was armed, and successfully made off with $8,300 in cash. A few minutes later police nabbed the suspect and arrested him while he was walking down Main Street.

41-year-old Joseph E. Starita of 108 Chestnut Street was arrested at approximately 2:10 p.m. and charged with robbery in the first degree and larceny in the second degree. He was processed and held overnight on a $100,000 bond and was arraigned the following day in New Haven Superior Court.

Lt. Thomas Fowler said his department received a phone call from bank personnel at 2:01 p.m. reporting a robbery. The suspect entered the bank, claimed he had a gun, and demanded money.

According to Lt. Fowler, the bank employees "got a very good description of the suspect," identifying the man's clothes and scruffy beard. Between the employees' description and the bank's videotape, a positive identification of the suspect was made after he was apprehended by police.

Not five minutes had passed after the robbery was called into police when the suspect was observed walking down Main Street. When Patrol officers approached the suspect, "[T]hey could clearly see cash sticking out of his right front and rear back pockets," Fowler stated. "He had [the cash] stuffed in his pockets and in the front of his pants."

The suspect, according to Fowler, surrendered without incident and admitted to police that he had just robbed the bank.

Police found no weapon on Starita, but a police dog did locate a hat and a handbag belonging to Starita stuffed into a nearby trash bin.

A background check of Starita's revealed that he has an arrest record and has served prison time for previous bank robberies, according to Lt. Fowler.

In a related story, after Branford Police processed Starita, Detective Sergeant Kenneth McNamarra of the North Branford Police Department presented Starita to the bank teller at Citizen's Bank that experienced an attempted robbery on May 26. "It was not the same man," McNamarra said.

The would-be robber of the North Branford Citizen's Bank is still at-large.