Metro East Bank Sued by Widow of Slain Security Guard

Ted Horn was killed when two men robbed the First Bank in East St. Louis

Aug 7, 2023 at 10:19 am

Surveillance video from the August 2021 robbery of First Bank in East St. Louis.

A Metro East bank that was the site of a deadly robbery two years ago is now being sued by the widow of 56 year-old Ted Horn, the security guard killed by one of the robbers as they left the bank with stolen money.

"There should have been better warnings," says attorney Gary Burger of the security protocols at First Bank in East St. Louis. Burger filed the lawsuit last month in St. Clair county on behalf of Horn's widow, Jana. "Horn was back in the manager's office. There's this robbery going on. He doesn't know what's happening. He walks out into [the lobby], and he says, 'What's going on?' And he gets killed."

The robbery happened on August 27, 2021, when Andrew Brinkley and Jaylin Quinn entered the bank in the late afternoon. One of the men handed a note to a teller saying that he had a bomb strapped to his chest and to “PUT ALL THE MONEY IN OR EVERYONE DIE.”

As Brinkley and Quinn fled, Burger says that Horn emerged from the bank manager’s office into the lobby.

According to the suit, Horn moved behind the two bank robbers to "ask what they

were doing, but took no aggressive action towards them." At that point, Quinn pulled out a gun and shot Horn in the head. He died shortly thereafter despite a teller's effort to administer CPR.

Brinkley and Quinn were quickly apprehended and are both serving sentences in federal prison, Quinn for more than 50 years, Brinkley for 20.

The robbery and Horn’s death made news across the region.Burger describes Horn as a person well regarded in his community and "not a threat to anybody." The robbery also made headlines because of the odd snippet of surveillance video which showed the robber Quinn at the bank teller counter wearing a hoodie bearing the image of Michael Scott, a character from the TV show The Office.

click to enlarge

Courtesy photo

Ted Horn was the security guard at the bank and was slain during the robbery.

When photos of the two robbers spread via the media, Brinkley's father recognized his son and alerted authorities.

Quinn and Brinkley are named as defendants in the suit as well, but Burger argues that the bank is also liable for Horn's death because it should have had a system in place to warn personnel that a robbery was taking place.

"Horn had no warning of what he was walking into," the suit says.

"I have kids who go to school and these days everybody has these shooter drills and training about what to do if there's a dangerous condition," says Burger. "Unfortunately, banks get robbed, so you'd think even more so that a bank ought to have a way to, if something like this happens, warn all the people and have everybody shelter in place."