69-year-old ex-con botches bank robbery one day after completing 22-year sentence

The convicted bank robber, who was supposed to go to a halfway house, tried to rob a mid-town Manhattan bank with a knife

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By New York Daily News

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NEW YORK — A 69-year-old desperado, fresh out of prison after serving 22 years for bank robbery, tried to hold up one of midtown's busiest banks on Thursday - with a knife.

John Stolarz had been a free man for only one day.

The ex-con was shot in the leg by cops and ended up at Bellevue Hospital, almost certainly looking at a new stretch of prison time. No one else was hurt.

Stolarz, convicted of holding up a string of banks in Louisiana, Nevada, Washington State and Utah - including two on the same day in Salt Lake City on May 2, 1988 - was released from a federal prison in Fairton, N.J., on Wednesday.

He was supposed to go to a half-way house, officials said, but instead he made his way to Manhattan to try a spectacularly stupid heist.

Read more at NYDailyNews.com.