EDINA, Minn. — To authorities, Ohio native David Lincoln White was a methodical bank robber who carried an assault rifle. But his parents described a hard-working private investigator who wanted to be a police officer.

        Edina police fatally shot the 30-year-old Boulder, Colo., man Thursday after he robbed a bank in Edina, a Minneapolis suburb.

        Police said Mr. White — who was dismissed from the Cincinnati Police Division's police academy in fall 1996, according to his mother — fired an assault rifle at officers in three separate gun fights Thursday before they shot him.

        One officer was hit in the leg and abdomen in the first of the shootings and another officer suffered minor injuries from bullet-shattered glass during another gunbattle.

        In Mr. White's rented sport-utility vehicle, investigators found handwritten journals that methodically detail more than a dozen bank robberies across the country, including maps, escape routes and notes.

        Investigators said they also found evidence that could link Mr. White to bank robberies in Ohio, Tennessee, Washington state, Oregon, California and previous robberies in Minnesota.

        Mr. White's mother, Clara, said from her suburban Cleveland home that her son must have been living a double life.

        “The thing that is so baffling is that he was a conservative Republican,” she said. “Everything was law and order with him. He hated criminality. We just don't know what could have taken him over.”

        She said her son had twice tried to become a police officer — once in their hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and again in Cincinnati. She said he once worked as a bounty hunter.

        “We had no notion of anything like this ... He was just a normal suburban kid from Shaker Heights,” she said. “There is nothing about him that would indi cate any of this.”

        Clara White said she hoped additional evidence found in the car might give her and her husband, James, some idea what motivated her son. “Maybe there is something in there, some message in there for us,” she said.

        “He just said there were personality things they didn't like ... He just called us one day and said he had let us down, that he had failed at the academy,” she said. “He was really hurt by that.”

        After that, she said, he went back to Cleveland and finished a political science degree at Cleveland State University. He told his family he was going to attend graduate school at Ohio State University in Columbus.

        “He seemed to be flourishing,” she said.

Seven minutes might explain suspect's death
Tobacco growers have burley blues
Fire destroys Covington home
DJ job sounds great
Food pantries face struggle
Homes built for 3 families
Police dogs get their day
Principals go back to school
Robber was would-be policeman
Teens' retreat targets poverty
Three chaplains link with police
Tour train still diverted
You asked for it
Local Digest
Kentucky Digest