Crime & Safety
Pharmacy Holdup Update: Cranberry Police Arrest Man Who Claimed to be Carrying Bomb
The Cranberry resident was taken into custody Wednesday.
Police have arrested a Cranberry Township resident in connection with an attempted robbery at the Rite Aid pharmacy on Route 19 Monday night.
Sgt. Chuck Mascellino said officers took Matthew Jeffery Macher, 34, of Fox Run Road, into custody Wednesday afternoon.
Police were called the pharmacy at about 9:25 p.m. Monday after a man with a bandana partially covering his face claimed to have a bomb. He then demanded drugs from the pharmacist.
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According to the criminal complaint filed by Cranberry Police, Macher threatened to detonate the device unless pharmacy employees gave him a supply of oxycodone and opana.
When one of the three employees ran from the store, Macher did the same, exiting through the front doors of the building and running to a wooded area behind the store. He did not take any drugs.
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During a recorded interview Wednesday, Macher admitted he was the person seen in surveillance video taken from the store during the incident, the complaint said.
He told police the “pipe bomb” he was carrying actually was a piece of PVC piping and part of an old cell phone.
He disposed of this device, and his shirt, in a nearby Dumpster following the incident, the complaint said.
Mascellino said police do not believe the incident is related to an armed robbery that took place Tuesday night at the BP gas station on Route 19 in Cranberry (for more on that story, click here).
Macher was arraigned Wednesday before District Judge David Kovach in Cranberry. He is charged with robbery, making terroristic threats, simple assault and criminal attempt in the incident.
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