NORTH ANDOVER — Police arrested an Eagle-Tribune mailroom worker yesterday and charged him with robbing the CVS Pharmacy on Route 114 late Monday.
Robert C. Cleveland, 32, of 525 Lowell St., Lawrence, was charged with armed robbery and larceny under $250. He was being held last night on $50,000 cash bail in a locked cell at the North Andover police station and was due to be arraigned in Lawrence District Court today.
Detective Lt. Paul Gallagher credited the cooperation of the newspaper with helping police to solve the midnight hold-up by a man, wearing a hooded sweat shirt and baseball cap, who displayed a handgun tucked in the waist of his jeans and told the clerk he needed money.
Several Eagle-Tribune co-workers apparently recognized Cleveland as the robbery suspect shown in a store security photo published in yesterday’s Eagle-Tribune.
“We got a phone call from an Eagle-Tribune manager who was approached by several employees who said it might be one of their own employees,” Gallagher said last night.
Cleveland was arrested yesterday afternoon following an interview with police detectives Eugene Salois, Thomas Donovan and Jay Staude. Gallagher said he is not a suspect in any other robberies at this time.
“We have to credit the Tribune manager for taking the information seriously and immediately notifying us,” Gallagher said. “Once we were given the information, we noticed the photo of the driver’s license was very similar to the one we were looking to identify.”
The CVS is adjacent to The Eagle-Tribune parking lot on Route 114. The suspect, according to the clerk, wasn’t greedy. As she was handing over the money in the cash register, he stopped her, saying “that’s enough,” Gallagher said.
The man fled with an undisclosed amount of money and vanished into the night, without the clerk seeing him get into a car.
Welcome to our online comments feature. To join the discussion, you must first register with Disqus and verify your email address. Once you do, your comments will post automatically. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including unpopular ones. We ask only that you keep the conversation civil and clean. We reserve the right to remove comments that are obscene, racist or abusive and statements that are false or unverifiable. Repeat offenders will be blocked. You may flag objectionable comments for review by a moderator.
