AUBURN — A judge sentenced a Wilton man Tuesday to two months in jail for his role in a Livermore Falls pharmacy robbery that featured a note threatening to set off a bomb.
Jeffrey Blair Johnson, 49, of 139 Village View Road was sentenced to three years in prison, with two years and 10 months of that time suspended, followed by three years of probation. Johnson pleaded no contest to the robbery charge.
Assistant District Attorney Claire Andrews said witnesses at Rite Aid on Main Street on May 23, 2015, described a man wearing sunglasses and dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt and a yellow-orange bandanna, who went to the pharmacy in the store and handed over a note, saying, “open the f****** safe.” The suspect told the pharmacist to give him “all of the oxycodone.”
After the pharmacist gave the man a few bottles of oxycodone, the man fled, Andrews said. Witnesses told police the man had a physical ailment and couldn’t run very well, Andrews said.
The note handed to the pharmacist said the man had a bomb and a gun and if the pharmacist didn’t cooperate, the suspect would detonate the bomb.
The incident was captured on surveillance video, Andrews said.
The bottles contained a GPS tracker that led police to a Borough Road home in Chesterville. Four men, including Johnson, were arrested there.
Police recovered pill bottles, a yellow bandanna and sunglasses from the home. Pills were found throughout the home and police recovered a memo notebook with a page torn from it, Andrews said.
Johnson told police that he and Shawn Francis, 50, of Peru, one of the men arrested, had left the home several times that day, but hadn’t gone to Livermore Falls.
Later, DNA tests would link Johnson, and not the other men, to the pill bottles, Andrews said.
Francis told police that he and others, including Johnson, had talked about robbing a pharmacy that day. Francis said he and Johnson drove to Livermore Falls and he left Johnson at a parking lot near Rite Aid. Francis said Johnson had been wearing a hooded sweatshirt, a bandanna and sunglasses that matched the video seen at Rite Aid. He also said Johnson had a bad hip and leg and limps a little.
Prosecutors dismissed a felony charge of stealing drugs.
While on probation, Johnson will be barred from having illegal drugs and could be searched and tested for them at random. He must undergo substance abuse counseling.
He won’t be allowed contact with Francis nor will he be allowed to enter the Rite Aid on Main Street in Livermore Falls.
Johnson will owe up to $1,200 in restitution to Rite Aid for the drugs that were taken.
Active-Retired Justice Robert Clifford said Johnson won’t have to report to Androscoggin County Jail until May 20, allowing him time to attend a doctor’s appointment and finish a work project.
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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