WATERVILLE — The man police believe robbed the Rite Aid pharmacy at 210 Main St. at knifepoint Thursday was found dead in his apartment Friday.

Nathan Boulette, 22, of 2-4 Main Place, Apt. 8, was found dead by police executing a search warrant shortly after noon Friday, still armed with a knife “similar to the one used in the robbery,” said police Chief Joseph Massey. He said the Office of the State Medical Examiner would determine the cause of death.

Waterville police Officer Cameron Huggins, left, and a state trooper with a tracking dog search for the man who robbed the Rite Aid store on Main Street in Waterville on Thursday. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel

Police believe Boulette who robbed the pharmacy just before 3:24 p.m., fleeing with a bottle of narcotics.

“We feel comfortable at this time that he’s the only person involved in the robbery,” Massey said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon. “We found the deceased in his residence, and the pill bottle we found there was a Rite Aid pill bottle.”

Massey said that the bottle was not empty when police found it.

Boulette’s body was clothed in what the robber was wearing in the pharmacy’s video surveillance, Massey said. Police on Thursday said the robber was wearing a T-shirt and hat with a pom-pom. “He still had the hat on,” Massey said.

A news release Massey sent out around 3:45 p.m. Friday said the robber fled in a gray Ford Taurus sedan with a distinguishable front license plate.

Late Thursday, Waterville police Officer Linda Smedberg found a car at 2-4 Main Place that matched the car used in the robbery, and police watched it throughout the night as detectives gathered more evidence linking Boulette and the car to the robbery, according to Massey. Lead Detective Dave Caron obtained a search warrant to enter Boulette’s home, Massey said.

At 12:17 p.m. Friday, Waterville detectives and patrol officers found Boulette dead in the apartment.

Massey said the only history Boulette had with Waterville police was from 2014, when he was charged with criminal mischief. He said he believes Boulette lived in the apartment with his mother, but no one was there when police entered the apartment to search it.

Boulette’s body was taken to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta but Massey did not know when an autopsy would be conducted.

“I don’t anticipate anything for another week or so,” he said.

The three-story Main Place apartment building where Boulette lived is a little less than a quarter mile from Rite Aid and adjacent to the former Boys Club, a brick building that has long been vacant.

Upstairs neighbors Molly Hayden, 52, and her daughter, Maggie, 16, were surprised when told Boulette was suspected of robbing the Rite Aid and that he had died.

“He seemed like a really good kid,” Molly Hayden said.

Hayden said she and her daughter moved to the apartment building about six months ago, and the Boulettes were living there at the time.

“I’m very shocked, seriously, because I just wouldn’t have expected it,” Hayden said. “You just don’t expect your child to die before you, and especially like that. I’m sorry. I’m very shocked.”

Maggie Hayden said she and Nathan Boulette used to “out-music battle each other.”

“I’d play my music quietly and he’d play his music louder. I would, like, make eye contact and turn my music up. I talked to him once and he was pretty rad – he was chill. He seemed both externally and internally chill.”

They said Boulette was a night owl who was never out and about in the morning.

All was quiet outside the Boulette apartment late Friday afternoon.

Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, Oakland and state police responded to the robbery Thursday, set up a perimeter around the area and State Trooper G.J. Neagle attempted to track the suspect with his dog, Draco.

More than a dozen officers responded, and Waterville police were grateful for the help, Massey said, which freed detectives up to review video footage, gather evidence and start developing suspects.

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