Document text
Bank robber sent to federal prison Daughter 6, waited in car during robbery A woman who robbed a bank while her 6-year-old daughter sat in the car outside will spend nearly four years in federal prison. Cynthia Alice Lockinger, 40, of Sprague River, was sentenced on Monday in U.S. District Court in Medford to three years and 10 months in prison. She was also ordered to pay $7,671 in restitution and a $200 court fee, and will be under post-prison supervision after her release, said Bob Thomason, the assistant U.S. attorney in Medford. Cynthia Lockinger was arrested on Feb. 23 in downtown Klamath Falls after a state police detective recognized her from a bank surveillance camera photo while he was investigating her husband for allegedly sexually abusing a child. She pleaded guilty in August to robbing the Wells Fargo Bank in White City of $4,116 on Nov. 26 and Southern Oregon Federal Credit Union in Grants Pass of $3,555 on Jan. 23. A third count, accusing her of robbing Bank of America's Pioneer Parkway Safeway Branch in Springfield of $6,179 on Jan. 31, was dismissed. Her husband, Michael Lockinger, 45, was arrested on sex-abuse charges and lodged in the Klamath County Jail. He was later transferred to the Jackson County Jail after the FBI added a federal charge of robbing a bank in Bend. Michael Lockinger is expected to be sentenced on that charge on Feb. 12. Thomason said that this was an unusual bank robbery case. "I've never had one where the parents had their kids with them when they robbed a bank," Thomason said. At the sentencing hearing for Cynthia Lockinger, the federal judge took evidence on the case to determine the length of her sentence, Thomason said. Lockinger claimed that her husband forced her to rob the banks. The judge ruled that she was coerced, but not enough to use that coercion as a defense in the case. Cynthia Lockinger also said that she used a toy gun in the White City robbery. But the bank clerk testified that it was a real gun and FBI agents found a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson at her home in Sprague River. The judge ruled that she used a real gun in that crime. The judge recommended that Cynthia Lockinger serve her time in a minimum-security prison in Dublin, Calif. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA