Local authorities reported that a bank in the town's shopping center was held up Thursday by an old man in a wheelchair.

Reports say that the suspect was an elderly white male, between 65 and 70 years old, has grey hair and was sporting a beard. He was immobilized, police said, as he was seen with bandaged legs, with one in a cast.

According to eye witnesses, the man, hooded and operating an electric wheelchair, entered the Wachovia Bank at the Stanford Shopping Center, produced a black handgun he pointed at a teller, and ordered to be given the bank's money. Afterward, he fled, still in the electric wheelchair, with the money in a Sharper Image bag that he had asked for minutes before robbing the bank.

"It sounds unusual because it's certainly not the fastest getaway in town," Dan Ryan of the Palo Alto Police Department told the San Mateo County Times.

The man then entered a van that authorities believe to have been owned by a paratransit service.

Authorities have released a sketch of what the man might have looked like, and put the drawing out to the public.

"We're hoping someone might recognize him," Ryan told the Mercury News.