Kathy Harris, left, and Dianna Smith were robbed a gunpoint Tuesday, Oct. 13. A woman walked into Texas National Bank (Banner Staff Photo by Don Treul) and demanded money from both tellers. No injuries were reported and police are still investigating the incident. For Dianna Smith and Kathy Harris, Tuesday, Oct. 13, started out like any other day at work.

Both women are tellers at Texas National Bank in Bullard. The pair had just taken care of a customer at the counter and another customer who had pulled through the drive-in facility. At about 10:30 a.m., the customers had left and Smith noticed a woman walking across the parking lot from the west, or toward the direction of a nearby Dollar General Store.

“I saw her and I wondered if she was a customer,” Smith said. “I was looking for her car.”

The woman, described in her early 20s, thin and with black hair pulled up in a bun, entered the bank just after all of the other customers had left.

“She was very calm.” Harris said. “I said, ‘How are you this morning.”

Smith said the woman walked toward her teller’s window.

“I said, ‘Good morning, can I help you?’ She said, ‘Yes you can,’” Smith said.

That is when Smith noticed the semi-automatic handgun the woman carried. It was not the first time Smith had been robbed. About 20 years ago, Smith was in a store she owned in Mt. Selman (about six miles from Bullard) when it was robbed.

Nevertheless, the woman’s handgun affected Smith.

“I was shocked. I had seen the gun.” Smith said. “She said, ‘I want the money out of your register.’”

Harris took notice of what was happening.

“She (Smith) gasped and kind of jumped and that’s when I looked over and saw the gun. I was trying to push my (silent alarm) button but she (the woman) said, ‘Don’t do that or I’ll kill you,’” Harris said.

The woman repeated her request for money from Harris and after she received the money she walked out of the bank toward the east. The tellers said the woman wasn’t in the bank for more than one minute or so.

“I think my heart stopped for a second and I thought to myself, is this really happening,” Harris said.

Seeing the handgun pointed at her frightened Smith.

“I was scared and I felt like a bullet went through my heart,” she said.

Smith and Harris said after the woman calmly left the bank, she continued her demeanor outside.

“Even when she went out she didn’t run,” Harris said.

Both tellers said that while they were being robbed, it was as if their minds were having a diffi- cult time believing it was real. In fact, Smith said she and Harris had undergone recent training for just such and event and she wondered for a second to herself if the robbery was just a test.

“No, this is the real thing,” Smith said she thought to herself.

Both Smith and Harris were uninjured and no other employee was accosted. Despite the trauma of facing a handgun and having their lives threatened, Smith and Harris had empathy for the woman.

“We’ll have to forgive her to get past this,” they said in harmony.

At the time of the robbery, the woman was wearing blue jeans and a camouflage-style jacket. She reportedly left the bank and got into a brown 2000 or late model Chevrolet pickup in the parking lot of a nearby car wash. The vehicle reportedly left the area and traveled south on Highway 69.

According to Bullard Police Chief Gary Lewis, officials found the jacket the woman was wearing alongside the roadway on F.M. 2137 west of Bullard. The jacket was to be investigated for forensic evidence.