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Bank robber who launched suburban manhunt gets 30 more years

Amber McBride doesn't leave home often.

She carries a constant fear with her since Robert Maday held a gun to her chest as he robbed a Lake Zurich bank in 2008.

Since he ordered her to empty her teller drawer of money but warned her not to give him the dye pack.

Since Maday, agitated, made her open the other teller drawers to prove they were empty — keeping the gun pointed at her for what seemed like an eternity — before taking her money and running.

The former bank teller described her encounter with Maday in a statement read by her daughter in federal court Monday.

U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman sentenced Maday to more than 30 years in prison for the Lake Zurich robbery, as well as five other robberies and an attempted robbery that happened in Buffalo Grove, Arlington Heights, Huntley and Bloomingdale in late 2008.

Maday, 43, is most widely known for a dramatic escape from custody that riveted the suburbs in 2009. He's already serving a combined 43-year sentence for previous crimes.

Monday's additional sentence makes it likely that Maday will spend the rest of his life in prison. He has yet to be sentenced in additional crimes, including the escape itself and a bank robbery committed during the escape, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Burke said.

Formerly of Elk Grove Village, Maday was being driven in September 2009 to the Cook County courthouse in Rolling Meadows when prosecutors say he slipped out of his restraints, overpowered two Cook County state's attorney investigators and escaped.

Maday said Monday an irresistible impulse led him to escape, Burke said.

As the manhunt crisscrossed the Northwest suburbs, Maday carjacked a woman in Hoffman Estates and held up a Bloomingdale bank before leading police on a high-speed chase that ended with a car crash in West Chicago.

While Maday's attorney has pointed out that his client did not physically harm anyone during the bank robberies, prosecutors Monday emphasized the emotional trauma still suffered by the victims — including McBride, 54, of Lake Zurich.

McBride was unable to finish her victim impact statement in court Monday. Her daughter stepped in and read it. But she spoke in an emotional interview with the Daily Herald after the sentencing.

“While he didn't put lead in my stomach, he hurt my mind,” McBride said, referring to the PTSD and anxiety she's lived with since the robbery and that has kept her from working full time for more than four years.

It's a fair sentence, she said, and a sad result of untreated mental illness going on to create other mental illness.

“My understanding is that he had a troubled childhood, but maybe if someone would have done something about his mental issues — there's a lot of victims here that could not have gone through what we went through,” she said. “It went full circle. It starts with him — and I'm sure I'm not the only one (of his victims) diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety. Because of that, who is going to employ me?

“My heart aches for him,” she said, “but what he did was wrong and he has to be held accountable. I think that Judge Gettleman did a great job in doing that."

Maday gets another 30 years for escape, hijacking

Infamous escapee facing new federal charges

Maday convicted in 2009 escape, robbery

  Police surround an apartment building in Arlington Heights during the 2009 search for escapee Robert Maday. Bob Chwedyk/bchwedyk@dailyherald.com
  Escapee Robert MadayÂ’s two-day crime spree ended in 2009 after the stolen car he was driving struck a Jeep and knocked down a stoplight in West Chicago. RICK WEST/rwest@dailyherald.com
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