Bill McNary has been robbed before, but not like this, not with 15 customers in his Maple Leaf Pharmacy last December.
“He was very vocal, yelling,” McNary told KING-5 on Thursday morning. “It was nervy to do it with all those people in the store.”
The gunman, who has since been arrested thanks in part to video cameras the store had installed the day before, has also confessed to robbing a Walgreens in Ballard, police say. That was after the Maple Leaf robbery, which occurred about 3:30 on a Monday afternoon just before Christmas.
“One customer yelled, ‘It’s a robbery – he’s got a gun,’ ” McNary said. The man took OxyContin, a powerful narcotic. “It all took about a minute and two seconds.”
There’s a proposal in the state Legislature in Olympia to toughen punishment for pharmacy robbers. That’s why the TV crew was here Thursday, to see what McNary thinks. He points out that pharmacies are a special target for crooks.
“Money is not an issue,” he said. “I don’t look for someone to rob me for money. I look for someone to rob me for drugs.” He also pointed out that the robber has 14 previous convictions. “He was just released from Monroe (prison) six weeks earlier.”
The same man is thought to have robbed Reckless Video on Roosevelt Way. Seattle Police have praised the pharmacy employees for contributing to the arrest. When KING-5 airs the story, we’ll post a link to it.
