Holdup lands man 19 years in jail
By Katie Curley - Staff writer
March 27, 2009
GEORGETOWN — A man charged with holding up a local CVS Pharmacy with a crowbar more than three years ago will spend the next 19 to 20 years in prison.
It was July 12, 2005, when David Thompson, 46, of Lynn, staked out the pharmacy on Central Street. Georgetown Police, on a routine patrol of the parking lot, ran Thompson's plate at midnight the night before the robbery and kept his information on file.
According to police, Thompson attempted to rob the pharmacy overnight but could not get in. He waited for the store to open and held the store up using a crowbar.
"He went in, took the safe, which had cash and drugs inside, and wheeled it out on a two-wheel dolly," Chief James Mulligan said Thursday. "We had run the plate earlier so we were able to identify him that way and he was later found in Maine."
Mulligan said Thompson also dropped a mechanism in the CVS that blocks cell phone signals, a device often used in theaters in New York.
"It jams cell phone signals had a cell phone been on," Mulligan said. "We didn't know what it was and called the State Police Bomb Squad, who had to blow it up, as we thought it could have been a bomb."
The mechanism was found the day after the robbery when a Georgetown Police officer was called to investigate a "humming" sound coming from behind the CVS. It was later established Thompson had planted the mechanism there to prevent people in the store from calling the police during the hold up.
In late July, Thompson was arrested in Kittery, Maine, for shoplifting at the Kittery Trading Post.
After the incident, Georgetown Police went to Maine to verify Thompson's identity using video surveillance from the incident, as well as DNA evidence collected at the scene.
Thompson was found guilty of felony armed robbery in Salem Superior Court last week.
Thompson, who had been serving a sentence in Maine on other charges, was in Salem Superior Court last week to face the armed robbery charge.
"The delay in the trial was because he was incarcerated in Maine for other crimes," Mulligan said. "The search initially was easier as a result of investigation and a good job on street with the license checks. One officer wrote down the plate number, so we were able to identify who the robber was quicker than we would have."
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