'Bicycle bandit' ordered held without bond after fleeing

Susan Phillips, Nikki Burdine and Delia Gonçalves | WUSA-TV, Washington

Show Caption Hide Caption Suspect escapes Virginia hospital barefoot and armed Virginia police are searching for a suspect who escaped private custody at INOVA Fairfax Hospital, barefoot in his hospital gown. Wossen Assaye is considered armed and dangerous. The hospital was locked down for several hours after his escape.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — An inmate who overpowered a guard and took her weapon at a Northern Virginia hospital is being held in jail without bond, a judge decided Tuesday.

Wossen Assaye, 42, fled Inova Fairfax Hospital in a stolen vehicle at about 3 a.m. ET Tuesday and led police on an eight-hour manhunt, said Chief Cathy Lanier of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. He is accused of stealing two cars in Virginia before he was caught getting off of a bus at Pennsylvania and Minnesota avenues in the southeast quadrant of the District of Columbia.

Assaye, dubbed earlier this month as the "bicycle bandit" after being accused of robbing a dozen banks in Northern Virginia and fleeing on a bike, still had a hospital gown on under some clothes and was wearing an ankle chain when he was captured.

Fairfax County Police, U.S. Marshals, the FBI and Virginia State Police all were searching for Assaye, who had been in the custody of two private security guards when he escaped from the suburban Washington hospital armed with the security officer's gun.

A few miles from the hospital, Assaye broke into the trunk of a car and waited, said Col. Edwin C. Roessler Jr., chief of Fairfax County Police. Once the car's owner, a nurse who works at Fort Belvoir hospital, began driving to work a few hours after the escape, Assaye kicked out the trunk and carjacked the vehicle.

Scared, the woman crashed her car in the driveway of a house and fled. The man, believed to be Assaye, took off in her car.

She then ran two blocks to a nearby gas station for help.

Police later found the car on a street not far from where it was taken. A weapon believed to be the gun Assaye took from the female security guard was recovered.

Assaye also is accused of carjacking a second vehicle, a 2008 gray or silver Hyundai Elantra with Virginia license plate XTU-5024, that has not been recovered.

Roessler said an "alert community member" identified Assaye and called District of Columbia police.

"We are glad that he is in custody and no one was gravely hurt in this event," Roessler said.

In Assaye's initial appearance before federal Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis in Alexandria, Va., the suspect was ordered held without bond on an escape charge. He was dressed in a white vinyl jumpsuit, shackled at the wrists and ankles and guarded by four marshals.

The hospital had been placed on lockdown shortly after the incident began. One shot was fired after Assaye overpowered a female guard and took her gun. No one was injured.

Dave Turk, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service, said Assaye left the hospital wearing a light blue hospital gown but no shoes.

Bobby Mathieson, U.S. marshal for the eastern district of Virginia, said Assaye had been shackled in the hospital room and was alone with the female guard when the struggle occurred. Mathieson said the second guard, a male, had left on a restroom break.

Assaye briefly held the female guard hostage before he fled the hospital, said Mathieson, who plans a review of policies and procedures in place for guarding inmates at a hospital. The guards were with Allied Protective Services, a private company.

Assaye is a suspect in multiple armed bank robberies in the area while on a bicycle and was being held by Alexandria city officials on federal charges at the time of his escape.

Assaye was arrested March 20 charged with a robbery at Apple Federal Credit Union in Alexandria. But in a court document, an FBI agent suggests Assaye is responsible for a string of 12 bank robberies in Northern Virginia during the past year and a half.

In all, the banks were robbed of about $32,000. In most cases, the robber entered the bank with a cellphone to his ear, demanded money and fled with cash on a bicycle.

Brooke Rupert, a public defender who was representing Assaye in the robbery case, declined to comment Tuesday.

Assaye had been booked into the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria on federal charges March 21, Alexandria Sheriff's Office officials said. On Friday, he tied a bedsheet around his neck and dove off a prison cell block in an attempt to commit suicide.

He was transported to Inova Fairfax Hospital for treatment.

"Per an agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service, Alexandria deputy sheriffs maintained custody of Assaye for the first 24 hours he was at the hospital before turning custody over to security officers contracted by the U.S. Marshals," according to the sheriff's office.

Contributing: Jane Onyanga-Omara, USA TODAY; Meta Pettus, Bruce Leshan and Andrea A. McCarren, WUSA-TV, Washington; and The Associated Press