A young St. Paul man addicted to opioid-based painkillers hopped over the counter at a Walgreens on Monday afternoon and ordered a pharmacist to empty all the prescription narcotics out of a safe, authorities say.
“Where they at? Give me the drugs! I want the drugs,” Manuel Christopher Lee Young, 19, demanded during the robbery at the pharmacy chain on Old Hudson Road and White Bear Avenue in St. Paul, according to the criminal complaint filed against him in Ramsey County District Court.
Young faces one felony-level count of theft and another for robbery.
After the pharmacist entered the safe’s combination, she was instructed to put 30 bottles containing more than 300 oxycodone pills valued at nearly $20,000 into Young’s blue drawstring backpack, the complaint said.
Young then reportedly took off running through the store’s aisles as a police officer chased him.
He was found hiding under a trailer in a construction yard across the street and arrested, the complaint said.
The pharmacist trembled as she recounted what happened to police, according to the complaint.
She told officers Young threatened to hurt her if she didn’t move fast.
The robbery was caught on the store’s surveillance video.
In an interview with police, Young admitted to stealing the drugs, the complaint said.
He told officers that he is addicted to Percocet and needed “a quick fix,” according to the complaint.
The plan to rob the store was conceived by two of his acquaintances “from the streets” who Young said planned to sell the stolen narcotics, the complaint said.
Percocet contains oxycodone, an opioid-based pain medication.
Young has no convictions on his criminal record in Minnesota.
His family could not be reached for comment. No attorney was listed for him in court records.
A separate pharmacy robbery that took place in St. Paul last week remains under investigation.
Police are looking into whether the cases are connected, but they do not immediately appear to be, according to Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul police spokesman.
In the earlier case, three males went to the CVS at East Maryland Avenue and Arcade Street at about 8 p.m. Oct. 9. One served as the look-out and two went in the pharmacy.
One grabbed a pharmacist by the arm, and then they stole a large number of pills from the safe and left, Ernster said.
The drugs were reported to be stashed in a garbage bag, and officers searching the area found a bag with more than 100 bottles and pills still inside, Ernster said. They arrested a 33-year-old man, whom a witness identified as being involved. Police continue to look for the other two suspects.
That case has not yet been presented to the Ramsey County attorney’s office for possible charges.