A suspected armed robber was shot dead as he ran across a motorway in Illinois yesterday after a high-speed chase with police.

Witnesses say the man leapt out of his vehicle onto Interstate 74 just north of a high school in the town of Normal. Among the witnesses was the photo editor of a local newspaper who took the opportunity to capture a number of extraordinary images.

David Proeber, of the Pantagraph newspaper in central Illinois, took almost 50 frames of the gunman as he got out of his sports utility vehicle brandishing a black handgun.

“His eyes met mine,” Mr Proeber told the Pantagraph. “And the next thing I knew, he leaped over the barricade and took a few steps at the car.”

Mr Proeber, who was in a white Mitsubishi car marked with the newspaper’s logo, said he feared he would be taken hostage by the man, named locally as Robert Sylvester.

“I didn’t think he was going to hurt me,” he said. “But I did have a real fear of being inserted into a police story.”

Mr Proeber said he ducked as the man, accused of robbing four banks, came towards him and floored the accelerator of his car - but not before taking 47 photographs of the incident in a three-minute period.

He told the newspaper he stopped about 150ft down the hard shoulder as he heard gunshots.

“I looked up in the rear view mirror as I was braking and saw police running toward him,” he said.

The man was lying on the pavement as an Illinois State Police trooper and a second police officer handcuffed him.

Authorities said the 57-year-old the man robbed a Bloomington currency exchange at gunpoint on yesterday and fled, reaching speeds of more than 90 mph as he sped along interstates and rural highways.

Officers said his description also matched the man accused of four bank robberies and a currency shop heist carried out in December.

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