KING5.com this morning posted its story on a drive in the state Legislature to toughen penalties for pharmacy robberies.
In the video, reporter Deborah Feldman interviews Bill McNary, owner of the Maple Leaf Pharmacy, which was robbed shortly before Christmas by the same man who police say robbed a Walgreens in Ballard.
Footage from the pharmacy’s surveillance cameras show a gunman attacking employee Linda Swayne, knocking her to the ground. Immediately afterward he corners Geraldine Crews, the pharmacy’s head technician. “He grabbed me off the ground, and smacked me in the back with the gun, and yelled at me to get the Oxycontin,” Crews says.
Our earlier report on this story is here. The man charged with the robberies, Jacob Harley Shook, has 14 previous convictions, and is due back in court this afternoon. He’s also believed to have robbed Reckless Video in Maple Leaf earlier in December.
Should such robberies be treated more like bank robberies? Prosecutors say tougher sentences for pharmacy robbers could mean three years behind bars instead of a mere three months.
