Ursula Condon drove an escaped convict through Shakopee at gun-point Saturday, then helped catch him after he got out of her car.

Miss Condon, administrator of Central Catholic Schools in New Ulm,was alone in her car,driving to the Twin Cities to visit a friend. She left New Ulm at 10 a.m. and was south of Shakopee on Hwy.169 when a Chaska Police car stopped her with its red lights flashing.

“A policeman and one of the escapees came up to my car and the policeman motioned to me to let the escapee in my car,” she said.

SHE DIDN’t know at the time that the man was an escapee. Albert Bankston,42,a federal convict being held temporarily at Chaska,had fled about 10:30 a.m. that day with another convict from the county jail at Chaska. The two men had taken a Chaska policeman hostage and forced him to stop two cars, one being Miss Condon’s.

What she did know was that the man who got in her car was carrying a rifle and a small handgun.

“I figured something was wrong. He told me to drive. He was civil enough towards me. Except when we got to a red light he became frustrated. He said then he was wanted by the police.

“I knew he was from the South by his accent. He asked if I knew the territory and I said no, even though I had been through Shakopee before.”

MISS CONDON followed Hwy. 169out of Shakopee and at the bridge north of town Bankston told her to stop and he got out.

She drove on for about six miles and pulled over when she saw a Highway Patrol car. She told the trooper to call the Shakopee Police. Just then over the patrol car radio came the message to be on the lookout for a car of a certain description. She told the trooper that was her car. She told him she had let the man out on the river bottom.

Bankston was captured between 4:30 and 5:30 p.m. Saturday when a Minneapolis police officer and his dog discovered him hiding under brush in the Minnesota River bottom north of Shakopee.

The dog circled some woods then started digging at the ground, police said.

BANKSTON HAD covered himself up with brush, twigs and dirt. When he started to getup the dog bit him on the left shoulder. Bankston had been lying on top of a sawed-off shotgun and a .45-caliber pistol, both loaded,police said.

Bankston, a Mississippi native, is now being held at the Hennepin County jail. The U. S. Attorney’s office would not say why he was in prison. He had been brought up from the U. S. penitentiary in Marion,Ill.,for investigative purposes, a spokesman in the U. S. marshal’s office said.

Miss Condon said she was “scared to death” during the ride and “was just glad he got out.”

“I wouldn’t want to go through it again,” she said.

The other man who escaped with Bankston, Gary Goodwin, 23,Minneapolis, was still at large Sunday. Goodwin commandeered the second car stopped by the Chaska policeman, got out at Shakopee,then abducted a Shakopee resident at gunpoint and forced him to drive him to Minneapolis.

New Ulm Daily Journal

June 2, 1975