BOARDMAN — A Kensington man will appear in court today on a charge of bank robbery.

It will be the first of two hearings for bank robbery charges this week, from two different jurisdictions.

Tary Lane Gilbert, 48, has been in Mahoning County jail since Thursday, when he was arrested at the Southern Park Mall, accused of robbing the nearby PNC Bank branch. He will make an initial appearance in Mahoning County Boardman Court, charged with robbery, a third-degree felony.

He is still on parole from his last federal conviction for the same offense.

Shortly after receiving the call at about 2:30 p.m., Boardman police found Gilbert just outside the mall, near JC Penney, and arrested him on suspicion of the robbery and on warrants for bank robbery from Youngstown Police Department and probation violation from the U.S. Marshals Service.

The bank teller and witnesses described Gilbert to police and said he was wearing a gray or green hoodie and had tattoos. A man matching his description was seen on the east side of the mall. Police found the hoodie discarded in a bathroom inside the mall.

Gilbert is also accused of robbing the Huntington Bank branch in downtown Youngstown last Tuesday. He is due for a preliminary hearing in Youngstown Municipal Court on Friday from that charge. Magistrate Donna McCollum set his bond at $15,000.

Gilbert remains under federal supervision after his release from federal prison earlier this year. Court records from the U.S. Northern District of Ohio, in Akron, show that in March 2020, Gilbert pleaded guilty to four felony charges, including bank robbery, attempted bank robbery and interfering with commerce by robbery.

He was sentenced in June of that year to five years in federal prison in Maryland. He was released on probation in 2022, but was arrested again last year. In September, he was sentenced to another 10 months in prison, to be followed by 22 months of supervised release, with six of that spent in a specialized facility for convicts seeking reentry into society.

The Boardman police report states that Gilbert entered the bank at the mall on Thursday and told the clerk to give him all of the $100, $50 and $20 bills in her drawer. When she handed him only two $100s and a $20, he became irritated and ran off with the money. The report states he used a similar approach in robbing the Huntington branch in Youngstown just days earlier.

It is unclear how much he stole in the earlier robbery. In both incidents, Gilbert was found to be unarmed, and nobody was injured in either robbery.

In 2006 in Austintown, he was charged with two felony counts of cocaine possession and pleaded guilty. He was ordered to complete a drug court rehabilitation program.

In Columbiana County in 2013, he was convicted of robbery and sentenced to a year in prison.