Quentin Brearley Police responded immediately when they were notified that a bank employee had a déjà vu experience on Dec. 22. The employee saw a suspicious man in the Newbury Park Albertsons parking lot and thought he seemed very familiar.

The man in the parking lot of the supermarket at 541 S. Reino Road, the site of an in-store U.S. Bank, looked just like the man who had robbed the bank two weeks earlier on Dec. 5, according to the employee. To add to the strangeness of it all, the employee reported watching the man stand outside the bank and put on a wig and fake mustache.

When the employee dialed 911, the police arrived quickly. At 11:02 a.m. deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department arrested Quentin Brearley, 57, and booked the Newbury Park resident in connection with the Dec. 5 bank robbery.

He was also arrested and charged with attempted robbery after police discovered he was in possession of a demand note and the license plates on his vehicle had been replaced with plates stolen from another car.

Detective Eric Bushow praised the bank employee’s alertness, saying the police appreciate “decisive actions by an observant citizen.”

Brearley was released from sheriff’s department custody and turned over to federal custody.

He’s now being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

—Nancy Needham