Summerville police say pharmacy robber got $18,000 in pain pills

An armed robber collected $18,000 worth of painkillers early this morning from a Summerville pharmacy, according to an incident report.

The report stated that the man walked into the CVS store at 301 N. Main St. around 2:15 a.m. and ushered the clerk to the pharmacy with a handgun pointed at her back.

He told the pharmacist to raise his hands high.

Complying with the thief’s demands, the pharmacist retrieved 2,658 Oxycontin, oxycodone and Percocet pills from a safe and packed them into two plastic bags, according to the report.

He ordered the employees to the ground in the middle of the store before he fled, the report stated.

Responding officers from the Summerville Police Department and a police dog followed a track to where a vehicle had been parked outside an Arby’s restaurant, but the robber wasn’t found.

Before the robbery, surveillance footage captured a “suspicious” white crew-cab pickup traveling back and forth on the nearby East Second North Street, investigators wrote in the report. But the police did not indicate whether the robber was seen walking from the vehicle.

Investigators interviewed two other potential witnesses, including a worker who hid in a back room during the incident and didn’t emerge until the robber left.

A 77-year-old man also told the police that he was parked outside the store for 20 minutes before the robbery and that he fell asleep in his vehicle and didn’t see anything. He was there to purchase over-the-counter medication, he told officers.

The robber was described as a 6-foot-1, 220-pound white man between 30 and 35 years old with brown hair, brown eyes and a brown mustache. At the time, he was wearing a black jacket, black hood, black pants and black shoes.

North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said investigators found similarities between last night’s incident and two armed robberies at a CVS on Ashley Phosphate within the last two months.

The suspect in those robberies was described as a white man, about 6 feet tall, wearing black clothing, with what appeared to be black shoe polish on his face.

North Charleston investigators are working with Summerville police to determine if the suspect could be the same man, Pryor said.

Anyone with information in the robbery should call the Summerville police at 851-4100.

Reach Andrew Knapp at 937-5414 or twitter.com/offlede.