W’burg man charged with burglarizing pharmacy

A Williamsburg man pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that he burglarized a local pharmacy last week wearing the same clothes he had on when he filled a prescription there earlier in the day, and that he was wearing when police stopped him.
Williamsburg Police Detective Wayne Bird charged Charles E. Folz, 28, with third-degree burglary about 3:05 p.m. Friday, less than 12 hours after he allegedly burglarized the Drive-In Pharmacy.
Bird said the alarm at Drive-In Pharmacy went off about 3:26 a.m. at the pharmacy.
Williamsburg Police Officer Shawn Jackson responded to the scene, and discovered the front door of the pharmacy busted out.
“He could see where some stuff was misplaced on the shelves. When the owner and the pharmacist got there, they rewound the videotape, and it showed the suspect on videotape,” Bird said.
Bird said he suspected the suspect was living at Emergency Christian Ministries because there were two prior attempts to break into the pharmacy over the past two to three months where the glass door was busted out.
“During one of the attempts, Officer Brad Boyd actually called a search dog in, which followed a trail to Emergency Christian Ministries, but we were never able to arrest anybody for those two burglary attempts,” Bird noted.
Bird said he was on his way to Emergency Christian Ministries Friday morning when he passed Folz walking north on US25W wearing the exact same clothing as the suspect in the burglary. “I talked to him briefly, made a photograph of him, and he went on his way,” Bird said. “Later on I received some information that he may be the one I was looking for so I went back up to Emergency Christian Ministries, and brought him back down for questioning.
“After a few minutes of talking to him, and after showing him the videotape, he confessed and admitted to breaking into the pharmacy,” Bird said.
He added that as Folz was seen leaving the store on the videotape, he could be seen pulling a gun out of his waistband.
“After talking with the suspect, I learned it was a toy pistol he picked up out of a toy box. He’s real lucky he didn’t get shot. If Officer Jackson had driven up as he came out the door, and he brandished that gun, there is not a doubt in my mind that he would have gotten hurt. In the video it looks just like an actual gun,” Bird noted.
Folz is the only person currently charged in connection with the burglary, but Bird said a couple more arrests are possible.
An undetermined amount of drugs were taken in the burglary, and none of the drugs were immediately recovered. “It wasn’t a whole lot, and there were very little narcotics taken. Most of what was taken was just blood pressure medicine, heart pills, and stuff like that,” Bird said adding he thinks more narcotics weren’t taken because Folz didn’t know where to look for them.
“He had been in the pharmacy earlier that day about 3:30 p.m., and had a prescription filled for Lortab. The pharmacist kept a bottle of Lortab right on the counter there. When they filled his prescription, he saw what bottle it came from and that is one of the things that gave him away,” Bird said.
“When he went in, he was kind of lost when it came to aisles when it came to what to get, but he went straight up to the counter, and out of all the narcotics sitting there, he picked the Lortab bottle. You could see him do that on videotape. He had the exact same clothes on when he filled the prescription.”
Bird said he thinks the two prior incidents where the pharmacy glass was broken out were tests of the alarm system, and efforts to see what the police response time would be.
Folz pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Monday before District Judge Dan Ballou, who scheduled a March 27 preliminary hearing in the case.
Bird investigated the case, and was assisted by Jackson, Boyd, and Officer Jason Caddell.