A man armed with a gun seized four women hostage at a branch of the Bank of America in a rural central Californian town after robbing it of about $100,000, one of the hostages told Reuters by telephone.

Bank of America loan officer Rebecca Tejada said the incident began at 4:55 p.m. (0055 GMT) when the man entered the bank in Exeter, a small community near Fresno, California, and held it up at gunpoint. After seizing the hostages, the robber released two customers and a bank teller but was still holding four women employees of the bank, she said. “There are just four of us left here,” she said in a hushed voice from inside the bank. “He wants all of us to leave with him in the car.”

Police at the scene said the gunman had requested only a getaway car. Authorities barricaded off the street in central Exeter and a SWAT team carried on negotiations. Tejada said no one had been hurt, and that the hostage-taker was taking to them in a calm manner. The stolen funds were in a suitcase. “He’s very calm and he’s just telling us about his life,” she said, describing their whereabouts as inside the bank’s automatic teller room. “He’s not rude.”

Tejada said the man identified himself as Jesse Martinez, 47, and said he was a local unemployed man. It was unclear if the man was directly monitoring the telephone conversation. The hostage-taker had allowed his captives to speak by telephone to their family members, police said. The last of the three released hostages exited the building at about 8 p.m. (0400 GMT). A small town with a population of less than 10,000 surrounded by farmland south of Fresno, Exeter calls itself the “Citrus Capital of the World.”

<B>Vanessa RICHARDSON </B>