Maine State Police search for leads in robbery of Pittsfield drugstore

PITTSFIELD – No new valid information has surfaced in the search for a masked robber who stabbed a customer at Pittsfield Pharmacy on Tuesday morning and then fled after forcing the owner to put thousands of dollars’ worth of narcotics in a bag.

“We’ve received a few calls,” Stephen McCausland, Maine Public Safety spokesman, said Wednesday. “But nothing has panned out.”

McCausland said the state police Criminal Investigation Division, which has taken over the investigation, will formally compare notes with the Fairfield Police Department next week because the Pittsfield robbery has many similarities to one a month ago in Fairfield.

McCausland said the state police are extremely eager to solve the case. “We have a very desperate individual out there and he has got to be stopped,” he said.

The robber accosted a customer outside the pharmacy Tuesday at about 11:15 a.m. The customer’s husband, reported to be in his 80s, attacked the robber with his cane and the robber stabbed him in the lower abdomen. The couple then fled the store and reported the incident to police.

Because the stabbing victim saw the robber’s face, the victim was able to provide enough information for a composite drawing to be created.

To protect the victim’s safety, police are not identifying him. His injuries were not considered life-threatening, according to police. No further information on the victim’s condition was available Wednesday.

After the stabbing, the robber then pulled on a rubber devil’s mask and, armed with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, ordered owner Ryan Dyer to fill the bag with narcotics.

No one else in the store was injured and the man fled on foot. Police believe he had a silver car parked near the store on Sebasticook Street and that the gun may have been a toy.

Police have described the suspect as about 20 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall, 180 pounds, and wearing a gray sweatshirt. He has dark brown curly hair, a dark mustache and goatee.

The pharmacy was reopened Wednesday morning and Dyer said he was being assisted by another pharmacist from Unity to help with the backlog of more than 300 prescriptions that were unable to be filled following the robbery Tuesday.