Boynton Beach robber pedals away with more than 1,500 pills

Erika Pesantes

South Florida Sun Sentinel

6:49 p.m. EDT, September 14, 2009

James Lachenauer, 19 (Boynton Beach Police Department)

BOYNTON BEACH - A 19-year-old man robbed a pharmacy of more than 1,500 pills at gunpoint and fled on a bicycle Monday morning, Boynton Beach police said.

Police caught up with James Lachenauer Jr., of Boynton Beach, while his mother was driving him to a store and charged him with armed robbery and trafficking in oxycodone and hydrocodone.

Police said Lachenauer was armed with a silver revolver and entered the Medication Station Pharmacy on Woolbright Road around 10:30 a.m. He ordered the six people inside the business to the ground and pointed the revolver at a clerk and demanded oxycodone and morphine.

Lachenauer handed a backpack to the pharmacist, who filled it with 18 bottles of morphine sulfate, Oxycontin and oxycodone.

Lachenauer ran out of the pharmacy and onto a bicycle. He then dumped the bicycle and ran to his house in the 2300 block of Southeast Fourth Street, where he asked his mother for a ride to the store.

Meanwhile, officers combed the area for the suspect. Detective Jason Llopis observed a small green SUV on South Federal Highway driven by a woman and occupied by a man who matched the suspect's description. The car was stopped and the passenger was identified as Lachenauer.

Detectives recovered the backpack, which contained the 1,524 pills, in the car. Police found the revolver at Lachenauer's house.

He is being held in the Palm Beach County Jail.