Whitwell, Tenn., and Marion County authorities are seeking a pickup truck used to ram the Whitwell Pharmacy early Tuesday and the thief or thieves who took thousands of dollars in prescription pain medication, Whitwell police Chief Rodney Easterly said.
Easterly said the culprits set fire to a stolen car on the other end of town about 2 a.m. CST Tuesday to distract the officer on duty so they could break into the pharmacy while he responded to the burning vehicle.
By the time the officer got the call on an alarm at the pharmacy he arrived to find the building damaged, an undetermined amount of medication gone and no one in sight, he said.
“They took off in what they rammed it with,” Easterly said. “We’re still looking for the vehicle. We know it’s a truck, but we don’t the make or model of it yet.”
Marion County sheriff’s detectives Gene Hargis and Chad Johnson are helping Whitwell police with the investigation, he said.
Johnson said technicians are reviewing videotape from a nearby surveillance camera to tell the make and model of the pickup truck.
“I believe we’re going to be able to get a good picture of the truck that was used,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of tips called in, and we’re running down those leads right now.”
Johnson said he wanted to check with other agencies in the region to see if the Whitwell break-in mirrors other pharmacy break-ins in Southeast Tennessee and surrounding states.
“There was one in McMinn County recently,” he noted, referring to two break-ins in as many months at the Anderson Pharmacy in Etowah, Tenn.
“It’s been our experience that these guys travel some distance to do these pharmacies,” Johnson said. “We’ve had guys from here go to South Carolina to do pharmacies.”
Easterly said pharmacy officials are performing an inventory to determine exactly how much and what was stolen. He said investigators believe the drugs taken were pills such as OxyContin, Oxycodone and similar pain killers.
Now officials are waiting for more details on the pickup truck in question, he said.
Anyone with any information about the pharmacy break-in is asked to call the Whitwell Police Department at 423-658-5151 or the Marion County Sheriff’s Office at 423-942-2525.