After 19-year-old Anthony W. Post lost his nerve last January and failed to go through with robbing the Walgreens pharmacy in Augusta, his cousin Stephanie L. McCormick berated him.
“You couldn’t do it, could you?” McCormick said of wimping out.
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About 15 minutes later, Post walked into the CVS Pharmacy on Stone Street and gave the pharmacist a note stating, “Quickly & Calmly put All oxycodone in bag If not I have a gun & will start shooting No Scene!”
Post fled on foot with eight bottles of pills, running several blocks to a car where McCormick was waiting.
McCormick grabbed the bottles, quickly emptied them and threw them and a tracking device out of the vehicle as it sped toward Whitefield.
U.S. District Chief Justice John A. Woodcock Jr. lays out the details of the Jan. 22 robbery, including the planning and the aftermath, in a sentencing memo that concludes McCormick was “an organizer, leader, manager or supervisor” in the commission of pharmacy robbery and is therefore subject to a lengthier prison term – 41 to 51 months rather than 33 to 41 months.
“The court finds that the idea to rob a pharmacy solely originated with Ms. McCormick, not with Mr. Post,” Woodcock wrote. “Ms. McCormick first described her prior success in robbing a pharmacy and told Mr. Post that he could get away with the robbery because he was not known in the Augusta area … Mr. Post’s initial response was that he thought she was crazy.”
Woodcock’s ruling was issued two weeks ago in anticipation of Tuesday’s 1 p.m. sentencing hearing for McCormick in U.S. District Court in Bangor.
McCormick’s attorney, Joseph Bethony, had sought to have a lower sentencing guideline used.
Post, McCormick and Candice Marie Eaton, then 26, of Augusta, who drove the getaway vehicle, have pleaded guilty to charges related to the robbery. Eaton is to be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and Post in early January, in the same court. The robbery was the first of several prosecuted in federal court after Kennebec-Somerset District Attorney Maeghan Maloney worked out an intergovernmental agreement to try to stem the rising number of pharmacy robberies in the capital. Augusta had nine in 2012, the most in the state.
Post was arrested three days after the robbery, and McCormick the following week. Eaton was arrested in March.
Betty Adams can be contacted at 621-5631 or at:
badams@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @betadams
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