By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

An Alabaster man will spend more than eight years in prison after he was sentenced March 10 for robbing Alabaster’s Regions Bank in May 2010.

Nathan Parke Bateman, 26, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to eight years and five months in federal prison and ordered to pay $543.90 in restitution, and will be on supervised probation for five years after he is released from prison.

The sentence came nearly a year after Bateman and 25-year-old Meridian, Miss., resident Robert Andre Morton robbed the Regions Bank off U.S. 31 in Alabaster at gunpoint. Both men previously pleaded guilty to the armed robbery charges and federal firearm violations.

Following the May robbery, Alabaster and Pelham police officers, Shelby County Sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents set up a perimeter around the county and began searching for the pair of suspects.

Shortly after the robbery, an Alabaster Police officer spotted the suspects’ vehicle and pulled the car over. The suspects were then arrested following a brief foot chase, and officers recovered the stolen money from the vehicle.

Morton was previously sentenced to serve eight years in federal prison for the crime.