Ninja star-throwing bank robber gets 10-plus years for Atmore heist

MOBILE, Al.
An Escambia County man with a long history of mental illness will serve 10 years and a month in prison for a 2009 bank robbery in Atmore that concluded with a police pursuit during which the defendant used a “ninja throwing star” on police.

Chad Floyd Jeter

Defense attorney Art Powell unsuccessfully sought leniency on behalf of his client, Chad Floyd Jeter, based on his mental illness.
Powell said Jeter robbed the First National Bank & Trust in Atmore that day in May 2009 as part of grand delusion in which he believed he was under surveillance by planes and helicopters controlled by artificial intelligence. He said his client had no criminal record.
“I hope he will do fine,” Powell said. “He has the type of mental disorder that is treatable, as long as he takes his medication.”
After Jeter gets out of prison, U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose ordered, he will have to spend five years supervised by probation officers and pay back $737 that authorities did not recover from the $6,829 he stole during the holdup.
Jeter, 32, drove south into Florida, where law enforcement officers chased him to a swampy area in Levy County. Jeter hurled the throwing star and then ran into the swamp, according to court records.
Florida authorities charged Jeter with attempted murder, but that charge was dropped after doctors found him mentally incompetent to stand trial.
That was the initial finding of medical authorities in the bank robbery, case, too. The medical staff at a federal facility in Miami diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic.
But a judge transferred him to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C., where doctors prescribed him medication that they determined had made him competent.