Teens plead not guilty to US bank robbery

LOS ANGELES - Dressed in orange jumpsuits, with shackles on their wrists and ankles, a New Zealander and an Australian have appeared in a United States court to plead not guilty to robbing a bank at gunpoint.

Luke Carroll from New South Wales, and Anthony Prince from New Zealand, both 19, no longer looked like typical teenagers on a working and snowboarding holiday in the US, when they fronted the US District Court in Denver, Colorado.

Under the careful eye of US marshals, the pair, both residents of Byron Bay in northern New South Wales, did not apply for bail and after the hearing were returned to a US federal prison in Denver.

Carroll and Prince pleaded not guilty to robbing a bank in the ski village of Vail of approximately US$130,000 ($185,900).

Prince and Carroll are accused of using BB pellet guns to threaten two female bank employees at Vail's Weststar Bank on March 21.

They were arrested soon after at Denver International Airport after purchasing tickets to fly to Mexico.

A trial has been set for May 31.

Prince, a New Zealand passport holder, and Carroll left their homes in the Byron Bay area in November last year for the snowboarding and working holiday in the US. They face up to 25 years in a US prison if convicted.

US Attorney's Office spokesman Jeff Dorschner said if Carroll or Prince had attempted to apply for bail today it would have been vehemently opposed by the US government.

"The government was going to argue they are both a danger to the community and a risk of flight," Dorschner told AAP.

"That's based on the violent nature of the bank robbery and based on the fact they bought a ticket trying to leave the country."

Dorschner said if Prince and Carroll had won bail today they would not have been free. US immigration officers would have taken the pair into custody.

"Immigration has a detainer on both defendants so even if they were to bond out of criminal custody, they would just be picked up by immigration authorities," Dorschner said.

The bank robbery has grabbed headlines in the US, particularly in the beautiful ski resort of Vail, for the way authorities quickly identified Prince and Carroll as suspects.

The bank attendants noted the robbers had accents, possibly Australian, and wore name tags similar to tags used by employees at the sports store Prince and Carroll worked at in Vail.

Police knew of Prince and Carroll after they were arrested in Vail in January for allegedly shooting at windows with BB guns.

When police and the FBI matched the descriptions and accents of the January incident with the bank robbery, they circulated mug shots of Prince and Carroll.

An alert officer at Denver airport, who had earlier looked at the mug shots, identified Prince and Carroll at a security checkpoint and then, after noting the pair had accents, arrested them.

- AAP