Great Barrington — A Great Barrington woman who police say gave a Main Street bank drive-thru teller a fake distress note on Wednesday, Nov. 2, was arraigned Thursday, Nov. 3, morning in Southern Berkshire District Court, where Judge Paul Vrabel continued the case for pretrial on Monday, Dec. 5.
In what is a bizarre start to a series of events that mobilized four police departments and the county’s special response team, police say Eloisa Garcia-Gaspar, 27, gave the Berkshire Bank teller $200 with a deposit slip that said “He says he has a gun, threatening to kill me 66 Main St. Apt. C.”
66 Main St. is Garcia-Gaspar’s place of residence.
The teller immediately called police and said Garcia-Gaspar was alone in her small red sedan. Police immediately surrounded the area around the apartment – which is in the same building as Domaney’s Liquors and Fine Wines – securing the perimeter for public safety, thinking an armed male might be inside the apartment. They also removed Garcia-Gaspar’s cousin and her cousin’s 4-year-old son from the apartment.
Great Barrington police interviewed Garcia-Gaspar, a native Spanish speaker, and said she denied passing the note. But when asked to write the exact words on the note on a separate piece of paper, police said the handwriting was identical to that on the deposit slip, and even the misspelling of the word “threatening” was a match. She continued to deny the handwriting on the back of the slip was hers, and it was at this point she was placed under arrest and released on bail.
Garcia-Gaspar’s attorney, Raymond Jacoub, told The Edge that pretrial ethics prevented him from commenting on the case. He did tell Judge Vrabel that his client might need an interpreter if the case goes to trial.
