Elderly Pa. woman sentenced for bank job

PITTSBURGH, July 6 (UPI) -- A 76-year-old grandmother who faced a maximum 34 years in prison for robbing a Pittsburgh-area bank at gunpoint was sentenced to 23 months house arrest.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said Marilyn Edna Devine, of Baldwin Borough, told the court that she robbed the bank in March 2006, because her adult son, who suffers from bipolar disorder, was financially strapped and suicidal.

Devine, a former nurse, has also been described as suffering from depression.

She was also ordered to pay $10,000 for the suffering of the three bank tellers who said she pointed a 9 mm handgun in their faces while wearing a hooded coat and a black-and-gold Pittsburgh Steelers scarf over her face.

One of the tellers had only been on the job for a couple of days and she thought the robbery was a training procedure until she saw how terrified her co-workers were.

The Post-Gazette said another former teller testified that she has had to tolerate "the ridicule of people laughing that I got robbed by a grandmother."