Holed up in a home that wasn't his, surrounded by a SWAT team and "stressed out" to a point only he could imagine, David Dean Dahlen talked to relatives on the phone, and then put a gun to his chest and pulled the trigger, according to investigators and family members.

Dahlen, a married 47-year-old convicted bank robber from Oak Grove, was found dead yesterday evening in a bathroom of a Plymouth home where he fled after authorities tracked him from a nearby bank robbery.

An autopsy today by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office concluded it was suicide, and police say they never fired a shot.

The incident began around 12:35 p.m. yesterday with a report of an armed robbery at a US Bank at the Four Seasons Mall. The male robber tried to drive off in a vehicle that wouldn't work, so he fled on foot, according to Plymouth police.

He went to a nearby home in the 4200 block of Quaker Lane, where he ordered the only occupant, a woman, out. She called the cops, who descended on the neighborhood with a SWAT team, FBI agents and officers from Plymouth and Maple Grove police departments, police said in a statement this morning.

The neighborhood was essentially locked down for hours while police tried to communicate with Dahlen. Police said he spoke on the phone with relatives, but never talk to them. Some time after 6 p.m., they went into the house and found him.

In 1997, Dahlen was released from a federal prison in California, where had been convicted of bank robbery, according to police and federal prison records.

His wife, Cosette, said this afternoon the David Dahlen she knew wasn't a dangerous or bad man.

"He was just a sweetie," she said in a brief phone interview. "He wouldn't hurt a soul. He just, he just got really stressed out."
