By SAMANTHA PERRY
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
PRINCETON —
Two Kanawha County men suspected of robbing two Princeton area pharmacies have been arrested.
The men were arrested Sunday evening at Bluestone State Park in Hinton, Mercer County Sheriff D.B. Meadows said. Both men are suspects in the armed robberies that occurred Saturday afternoon at the Rite Aid on New Hope Road and the CVS Pharmacy on Stafford Drive.
Randall Sniff, 18, and Christopher Chapman, 24, both of Hernshaw, have been charged with two counts of armed robbery, one count of attempted robbery and a conspiracy charge in connection with the Rite Aid robbery, Meadows said.
The Princeton Police Department has charged Sniff and Chapman each with two counts of first-degree robbery and a count of conspiracy in connection with the CVS Pharmacy robbery, said Detective David Whited. Plans call for bringing both suspects back to Mercer County today for arraignment before a magistrate.
The Rite Aid robbery occurred around 2:53 p.m. on Saturday. “They went in to rob the pharmacy, and the pharmacy was closed,” Meadows said. “They followed a lady out and robbed her and her husband in the parking lot.”
No one was injured during the robbery, but Meadows said both men “had handguns, and they displayed them to the people at Rite Aid.”
The two suspects then left that site and drove to the CVS Pharmacy on Stafford Drive, entered the store and robbed store personnel.
“We recovered the weapons and a large quantity of drugs that they took from CVS,” Meadows said. “We don’t have all of them, but I would say we recovered 90 percent of them.”
Meadows said he believes the robberies were planned. “They came here to rob those two pharmacies,” he said.
Meadows said several witnesses saw the suspects and the car they were driving — a white, early 1990s model Ford Taurus, with a doughnut-style spare tire on the front passenger side. The men were also captured on surveillance cameras.
“Apparently, after the robberies on Saturday, they spent the night at Camp Creek State Park,” Meadows said. “We were lucky they didn’t head back to Kanawha County.”
Meadows said the break in the case came Sunday afternoon when a Hinton police officer and a state police trooper spotted the suspect’s vehicle in Hinton. “When they saw the car they remembered we had BOLOed (Be On the Lookout) that vehicle out.”
Meadows said a female was driving the vehicle, and the officers detained her until Mercer County officials arrived. “After talking to her for 45 minutes to an hour, she told us where to find the suspects,” Meadows said.
The men were arrested without incident, Meadows.
Meadows said he anticipates at least one other individual will be arrested in connection with the robberies.
— Contact Samantha Perry at sperry@bdtonline.com
— Greg Jordan contributed to this story.
