FARMINGTON – Police are looking for a man who robbed one pharmacy and attempted to rob another Friday night in Farmington.
A man estimated to be between 18 and 23 years old entered Howard’s Rexall Pharmacy on Main Street in Farmington by the back door at 5:15 p.m. and “scoped it out,” according to Sgt. Peter Barton of the Farmington Police Department. He left, but returned several minutes later and approached the pharmacy counter at the back of the store, telling a clerk there that he had C-4 explosives and that he would “blow the store up if he didn’t get any oxycodone,” Barton said. Overhearing the man, pharmacist Rob Witt refused to comply, and the man left the store without further incident.
He was carrying a plastic bag, Barton said, but police do not believe it contained any explosives.
At 5:40 p.m., a man matching the same general description was reported to have successfully made off with an undisclosed amount of oxycodone after he threatened a pharmacist at Wal-Mart on Wilton Road, saying he had a gun, though witnesses there did not see one, Barton said.
Oxycodone is a generic form of Oxycontin, a narcotic painkiller.
State police Trooper Mathew Casavant and his tracking dog, Kaiser, were called off their search in downtown Farmington when police believed the Wal-Mart heist involved the same man.
Meanwhile at Wal-Mart, Farmington police, a sheriff’s deputy, a Wilton police officer, a state trooper and store security officers and management reviewed surveillance videos from both stores, in which the robber appeared to be the same person. But the tapes still need to be enhanced to get anything usable, Barton said.
Police believe the man was traveling in a vehicle, given the distance he covered within the short time between the two incidents, but they do not have a description of it.
The man, acting alone, was described as white, between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 11 inches tall, with no facial hair and wearing jeans and a blue plaid shirt. The Wal-Mart pharmacist said he was “a clean-cut-looking kid,” according to Barton.
Police did not know Friday night whether the man was actually armed.
“There’s no way to know; he didn’t show anything,” Barton said. “But (the pharmacist at Wal-Mart) was better off to follow store protocol,” he added.
Anyone with information about the incidents may call Farmington police at 778-6311.
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