Pubdate: Sat, 01 Dec 2001
Source: News & Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2001 The News and Observer Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.news-observer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/304
Author: Thomasi McDonald, Staff Writer

MAN CHARGED WITH TAKING DRUGS FROM EMPLOYER

Police arrested an 18-year-old Raleigh man Thursday and charged him with 
taking hundreds of dosage units of prescription drugs from a local pharmacy 
where he worked and giving them to friends, according to court records.

Gregory Mark Wootton, of 7114 Broomfield Way, was arrested shortly before 6 
p.m.

He was charged with felony embezzlement after a lengthy internal 
investigation by officials with Eckerd Inc., where he had been employed for 
more than a year, according to court officials and records.

Less than one hour before his arrest, Wootton prepared a two-page written 
statement for Eckerd officials that was filed Thursday at the Wake 
Magistrate's Office.

Wootton first began working for the pharmacy at 7440 Creedmoor Road in 
August 2000 as a photo technician. In January, he started working as a 
pharmacy technician, according to his written statement.

By early summer of last year, Wootton wrote, an unnamed friend approached 
him and asked whether he could get him "something."

"By that, he meant hydrocodone," Wootton wrote.

Hydrocodone is a Schedule III narcotic painkiller under the North Carolina 
Controlled Substances Act.

Wootton admitted to taking a bottle of 100 hydrocodone tablets and giving 
it to the friend, who did not pay the pharmacy and did not have a 
prescription, Wootton wrote in his statement, written in the presence of 
two Eckerd officials.

The suspect told the company officials he thought it was a one-time 
request. Instead, the friend returned asking for more and also sent other 
friends to obtain a variety of unprescribed drugs.

"Over the past five or six months, I have taken other drugs to give to 
friends without paying," Wootton wrote.

The young man then provided investigators with a list of all the drugs he 
could remember taking during that period, according to the written statement.

Among the drugs Wootton confessed to taking from the pharmacy were 1,000 
hydrocodone tablets, 200 Valium tablets, between 400 and 500 diazepam 
tablets, 100 xanax tablets, 500 alprazolam tablets, 100 klonopin tablets, 
200 clonazepam tablets, 100 cylert tablets and an undisclosed number of 
lorezepam tablets.

Wootton told investigators he took the cylert last week for himself because 
he was working so hard.

Cylert is a stimulant commonly used to treat children with 
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The other drugs Wootton listed in the statement are all Schedule IV 
anti-depressants.

Wootton expressed remorse in the statement that he wrote Thursday. "I wish 
I could bring some of them back," he said about the drugs. "But I have 
given them all away."

The Raleigh man was the second teenager arrested this week for taking 
prescription drugs from the pharmacy where they were employed.

Quinci Margaret-Jean Phillips, 17, a 12th-grader at Garner High School, was 
arrested Tuesday and charged with taking prescription drugs from a CVS 
Pharmacy where she worked.

Wootton was taken into custody at the Wake County jail and placed under a 
$75,000 secured bond.

Staff writer Thomasi McDonald can be reached at 829-4533 or  ---
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