CHEYENNE - Edward Lee Vanek, the man accused of robbing a bank in Cheyenne last Friday and then leading police on a high-speed chase to Laramie, had been scheduled to close on a house purchase that day and told his girlfriend before the robbery that he was heading to his bank to straighten out a delayed money transfer, according to an FBI affidavit.

Vanek, 45, was shot twice by police last Friday in a house in Laramie about an hour after the robbery of a First Interstate Bank in Cheyenne.

Vanek, originally from Montana, made an initial court appearance from his bed at Ivinson Memorial Hospital on Tuesday before Albany County Circuit Judge Robert Castor.

According to papers filed in court by the U.S. attorney's office, Vanek faces penalties ranging from seven years to life imprisonment plus fines of up to $500,000 if convicted of armed bank robbery and carrying a firearm during a violent crime.

FBI special agent Richard Fanelli filed a statement in U.S. District Court to secure an arrest warrant for Vanek.

According to Fanelli's statement, a bank worker told police that the robber came into the bank and placed a white bag on the counter. The robber told a teller that the bag held a bomb that could be detonated by cellular telephone. The robber then fled with money from the teller drawers.

Keith Lind, a Laramie County sheriff's deputy, spotted a pickup truck that matched the description of the bank robber's getaway vehicle on Dell Range Boulevard. Lind followed the truck onto Interstate 25, and other police vehicles joined in the pursuit.

Police followed Vanek from Cheyenne to Laramie and saw him throw a bag containing nearly $8,600 from his pickup truck along Interstate 80, according to the FBI statement. During the chase, Vanek brandished a handgun at officers and repeatedly drove around spike belts that would have flattened his tires, according to the statement.

According to the FBI statement, police followed Vanek's truck to a house in Laramie. A sheriff's deputy shot and wounded Vanek when he failed to drop his handgun inside the house.

Fanelli stated that an agent with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation told him that he had talked to a woman outside the house where Vanek was shot. The agent said the woman was a graduate student at the University of Wyoming who said she lived in the house with Vanek and that he was her boyfriend.

The woman told police that Vanek had claimed to have a large sum of money in a bank in Montana from the sale of his cleaning supply business there. She said she and Vanek were going to close on a house purchase that day, but that Vanek indicated he was upset because his bank in Montana had failed to transfer money to a bank in Laramie for the closing.

She said Vanek left that morning saying that he "was going to the bank to get it straightened out and would return with the money needed to close on the house."

However, the woman said the next time she saw Vanek was when he ran into the house holding a handgun and told her, "Guess what? I robbed a bank." The woman told police she had no prior reason to suspect that Vanek was involved in a bank robbery.