By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

The pharmacy at Lin’s Marketplace was robbed at gunpoint on Monday, October 10 at around 7:45 p.m.

Police said that a man came into the store Monday evening wearing a hood and a surgical mask over his face. He went to the store’s pharmacy counter, showed a gun to attendants there and demanded them to hand over the store’s supply of the prescription opiate, oxycodone.

Pharmacy attendants complied with the man’s requests and the suspect immediately left the store with the drugs.

Police said that the stolen pills had a street value of $35,000-$40,000.

The suspect and a female alleged accomplice were apprehended by local Metro officers shortly after the incident in a parking lot nearby.

Police identified the man as Maxwell Houghton of St. George, Utah. The female suspect was identified as Paulette Stoker, also of St. George. Both were also identified as former police officers for St. George Police Department, police said.

The two are also suspected of similar incidents which have occurred recently in St. George.

Local Metro Sergeant Bret Empey credited the quick arrest, in part, to the efforts of an eye witness at the scene.

“We were fortunate to have a good witness who saw the suspect going into the store prior to the event, witnessed the event take place and then watched where the suspect went afterwards,” Empey said. “She helped us locate the suspects after they had left the store. It just goes to show you that when you think something is amiss in your surroundings, you are probably right.”

Local resident, Sue Chapman was the eye witness to the incident. Chapman was waiting in line at the drive-through pharmacy window when she saw the suspect walk behind her car from the lot to the south of the store.

“I saw some guy walking by with his hood up so you couldn’t really see his face,” Chapman said. “I remember thinking that it seemed a bit warm out for that.”

As she progressed to the front of the line and arrived at the drive-up window she noticed the man again through the window. She said that, by this time, he had put on a medical mask and had walked into the pharmacy, behind the counter.

“That seemed very strange because I knew that he wasn’t supposed to be back there,” Chapman said.

Chapman said that the suspect went out of her view for 20-30 seconds. Then she saw him walk out of the pharmacy area. A moment later, the pharmacy attendant came to the window and told her that there had been an emergency and that she had to close the window for a while.

A moment later Chapman saw the man running across the parking lot and towards the empty lot to the south of Alma Avenue.

“At this point I thought that he had to have robbed the place,” Chapman said. “I decided I was going to watch and see where he was going.”

She said that she observed Houghton get into a vehicle which had been parked in the empty lot. He then slowly drove the car around and parked in the stand-by parking spot just in front of the McDonalds restaurant next door to Lin’s, she said.

Chapman, who had observed all this from her vantage point in the Lin’s parking lot, then saw the Metro police officers responding to the scene. She saw them park and go into the store.

Not wanting to lose sight of the suspect, she asked someone passing by in the parking lot to go inform the officers that she knew where the suspect was. When the officer came out, Chapman explained the situation.

But while the officer was getting back to his vehicle, the suspect began to make preparations he was going to leave, Chapman said.

Chapman moved quickly. She casually made a wide turn into the McDonald’s parking lot from Moapa Valley Blvd. thus blocking the suspect’s exit. This forced him to go around to the Tres Lobos exit where the Metro officer apprehended him.

“I knew that if he got out of that parking lot, we’d probably end up with a high speed chase all through town and someone might get hurt,” Chapman said.

Houghton was charged with two counts of kidnapping in the first degree, burglary with a firearm, robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery. Stoker was charged with burglary with a firearm, robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery. Both were taken into custody and were being held in the Clark County Detention Center.

Rich Jensen, Regional Vice President for Associated Foods, the company the owns Lin’s Marketplace, stated that it was just fortunate that no team members were injured in the incident. He said that he and his team would be re-evaluating safety procedures at the store.

“This is not an isolated incident,” Jensen said. “We have seen quite a few similar robberies to small local pharmacies around southern Utah. We will be looking at the set up of the Overton store’s pharmacy and try to make sure that we have the safest set-up that we can possibly have. That way we can take this negative and make a positive out of it.”