SNELLVILLE, Ga. — Police are searching for a burglar who used a sledgehammer to break into a pharmacy and steal thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs.
Channel 2’s Nicole Carr exclusively obtained video of the break-in at the Eastside Pharmacy in Snellville overnight. In it, you see the man break open a hole in the wall and slide through it. He then stole cash and more than $12,000 worth of critical medication for cancer patients, including Percocet, oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine and several others drugs.
"We're gonna have cancer patients that come in today and we're not going to be able to help them with their medicine,” co-owner Esther Truitt said. “I’ve already turned somebody away this morning.”
The owners say they have special relationships with the pain and cancer centers surrounding their 2-year-old pharmacy, where they compound medication for patients that's not easily found in chain pharmacies. Now they are having tough phone conversations with doctors about supplying patients. %
%
“’Not today. Somebody just busted up my wall and took their meds.’ That’s what’s hard for me,” co-owner Michelle Dalton said.
The entire burglary took just 30 minutes.
"I know what drugs they took and now what's, once again, on the streets,” Truitt said. “It makes me angry. It makes me nauseous.”
Police say the man had to be small and agile to fit through the tiny hole he made in the wall.
“He knew what he was doing. He knew where he was going and he knew what he was looking for,” Truitt said.
A lawn maintenance man alerted the owners to the damage early Thursday morning.
This is the second time the pharmacy has been hit in two months. They say after the first break-in, in which $25,000 worth of drugs was stolen, they upgraded their security system but it still didn’t stop this man.