SC bank robber calls sheriff to confess his crime, then turns himself in

A man charged with robbing a bank in Spartanburg Friday turned himself in to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.

Melvin Curtis Cheek, 59, of Spartanburg, turned himself in Monday, according to the sheriff’s office. Cheek was charged with bank robbery for the incident that occurred shortly after 1 p.m. last Friday.

Cheek called deputies, twice, to confess to robbing the Arthur State Bank on Highway 29, according to multiple online reports.

Deputies say Cheek told them he was going to turn himself in on Wednesday after he “took care of some personal matters,” but he turned himself in Monday instead, according to wspa.com.

Several people identified Cheek as the suspect Friday, which led deputies to use a warrant to search his home, according to Sheriff’s Office spokesman Lt. Kevin Bobo.

Bobo said Cheek wasn’t home when deputies searched the house, according to goupstate.com, but they found evidence seen in the bank’s surveillance video.

This isn’t Cheek’s first unusual run in with the law. In 1999, Cheek was arrested after the holdup of a shop owner and was caught hiding in a tunnel, according to goupstate.com.

Cheek was charged with armed robbery, after entering a store where he pretended to shop, made small talk about the price of an item before rushing to the back of the store and demanding money while pointing a handgun at the shop owner, according to goupstate.com.

After fleeing, a law enforcement officer saw a man who fit the description of the suspect jumping out of a patch of kudzu and onto an embankment, before trying to crawl through a tunnel, according to goupstate.com.

This story was originally published October 23, 2017 at 8:21 PM with the headline "SC bank robber calls sheriff to confess his crime, then turns himself in."