CEDAR PARK, Texas – Cedar Park police are warning residents to be vigilant after Wells Fargo bank employees alerted them to a possible jugging situation Thursday morning.

“Jugging” is a crime in which a suspect waits for someone to withdraw money from a bank or ATM, then follows the person to steal the cash. The offense became a felony in Texas last September.

The backstory:

“It’s a fairly common phenomenon. We deal with it several times a year, ranging anywhere from $500 to we had one incident a few years ago with a $100,000 loss,” said Cpl. Dan Kitchens, Cedar Park Police Department.

On Thursday, April 30, bank staff described suspicious behavior from a group of men who were watching customers and appeared to be casing the location.

“Once we got in the area, the vehicle that the suspects were occupying went mobile, and we were able to follow it into another bank, Bank of America,” Kitchens said.

Kitchens said when the suspects noticed his police cruiser, they took off, leading officers on a high-speed chase. The pursuit went through the Riviera neighborhood, where two men jumped from a moving car.

Officers eventually caught the pair after a brief foot chase. They were identified as Gabriel Lara and Nicholas Barrientos.

Meanwhile, the driver continued but did not get far.

“They crashed on the 183 to 45 flyover when it was starting to rain really heavily,” Kitchens said.

The driver, Ruben Barrientos, was taken into custody at the crash site.

All three men are from Waco.

“We did interview them after the pursuit and the driver did say they came down to the area to conduct jugging-type robberies or burglaries,” Kitchens said.

They are only facing charges for evading arrest because police intercepted the suspects before any jugging incidents were committed.

“We do believe that they were involved in a jugging last Friday. We didn’t have a reported victim yet, but that was not in Cedar Park, that was in Austin,” Kitchens said.

Detectives have also since connected the trio to an active case out of Oklahoma, in which a victim was followed to a place of worship and approximately $25,000 was stolen.

Police remind residents to be aware of their surroundings, not to leave cash inside vehicles and to call 911 if they believe they are being followed.

A small plane crashed among trees in Texas Hill Country, killing all five people onboard, officials said on Friday.

The crash happened in the dark late on Thursday night in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles south-west of the state capital, Austin, the Hays county judge, Ruben Becerra, said in a post on Facebook.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the Cessna 421C crashed around 11.25pm with a pilot and four passengers on board.

“I just heard a loud crash. I felt everything vibrate,” Stacey Rohr, who lives nearby, told local channel KEYE-TV. “Everything was up in flames. It was crazy.”

Cecil Keith said he heard what sounded like an engine backfiring – “pow, pow, pow” – when the plane flew over his house moments before the crash.

“Something was definitely wrong,” he told the TV station.

The plane took off from Amarillo, in north-west Texas, about two hours earlier and was headed to New Braunfels national airport, near Austin, according to the flight history. It crashed not far from its intended destination. Aerial images show the remains of the aircraft destroyed in a wooded area.

Becerra said he would not release the names of the victims until family had been notified.

He said a second aircraft traveling in the area landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels, about 30 miles north-east of San Antonio.

One pilot said he and the Cessna pilot were flying there together, according to air traffic control audio.

“I haven’t heard anything from him,” the pilot says on the recording.

A controller responds: “He started to move erratically and now his track is disappeared from the scope. So we want to make sure everything’s all right with him.”

At least one pilot in the area confirmed the troubled plane’s locator emergency device had emitted a distress signal. The controller called 911.

It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area shortly before the crash and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.

Wimberley, with a population of about 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of about 116,000, are both tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country, drawing hikers attracted to the woody rolling hills and others for tubing on rivers in the area.