Police are hunting for a man who made off with OxyContin in an armed robbery at the Rite Aid pharmacy at the intersection of routes 112 and 22 in Buxton.
Buxton Police Officer Kimberly L. Emery said that the robber entered the pharmacy at 3 p.m. Wednesday and he showed a note asking for OxyContin, threatening that he had a gun. Police described the robber as a white male wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, white shoes and a light-colored baseball hat.
The man was given an undisclosed amount of drugs and left the store in an unknown direction, according to the police report.
Rite Aid workers in Buxton referred comment about the incident to a public relations spokesperson in Pennsylvania. Jody Cook, a Rite Aid spokeswoman, said the Rite Aid employees in Buxton were not harmed in the robbery. “We are cooperating closely with authorities,” Cook said.
Rite Aid declined further comment on the robbery.
Steve McCausland, a spokesman for the Maine Public Safety Department, said a team of state troopers responded to the Buxton holdup. But he said the Buxton Police Department is heading up the investigation.
Buxton police had recently warned the town’s business owners about armed robberies in surrounding towns. Describing the suspects in similar incidents in South Portland, Windham and Gorham in addition to Lewiston, Freeport and Biddeford, a police flyer said the gunman suspected in the other robberies wore a hooded sweatshirt to hide his face and was armed with a black handgun.
The Buxton handbill urged caution to those confronted in a holdup and to cooperate with the robber. “Don’t try to take the law into your own hands. Some of the biggest heroes aren’t around to tell about it today,” the flyer said.
In Standish, a gunman fired a shot in the air near a teller’s window in the armed robbery of a branch of the Gorham Savings Bank. In another recent robbery, a Gorham Savings Bank branch in South Portland also was held up. In the recent rash of robberies, McCausland said three banks near the Maine border in New Hampshire have also been recently robbed.
McCausland said police are looking at drugs as a possible “common link” in the armed holdups. “All bank robberies in recent years have had drug connections,” he said.
The Rite Aid in Buxton was held up by an armed man seeking OxyContin last week.
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