NEW YORK
-- "So tired today," Annemarie Dooling tweeted early Tuesday. "really really tired. ugh."

A couple of hours later, things really really picked up.

"My bank was just held up - with me in it. HSBC 34 and 8," the 26-year-old Web producer tweeted her 1,900 or so followers just after 9 a.m. under her Twitter name, TravelingAnna, referring to 34th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan. "Also my whole trackball is GONE!!! I'm locked in the bank still."

And thus began a rather unusual Twitter thread - a bank heist, or at least its immediate aftermath, in 140-character-or-less updates. Was it the first bank heist to be tweeted? The folks at Twitter Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As for police, they confirmed the robbery and said the unarmed suspect, who had given a threatening note to the teller, fled with $500.

Before going any further, it must be pointed out that Dooling isn't asking for the key to the city; police had already been alerted by more traditional means, with a 911 call. And actually, Dooling was too busy, well, looking at her BlackBerry to be the first to notice the heist.

But she also didn't expect to be criticized online, by folks who apparently thought she should have been alerting police or doing something else - anything - rather than tweeting.

"Honestly, the cops were called and everyone was safe and my main concern was reaching out to my friends, fam, and co-workers, which is why I tweeted," she said later in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Dooling, who lives on Staten Island, said she entered the bank near Manhattan's Penn Station just after 9 a.m., filled out a deposit slip and got in line.