Melinda Brady entered into view of one of the store’s surveillance cameras, and one that was equipped with a microphone caught her reaction, the Suffolk County district attorney, Thomas J. Spota, said in a news conference on Thursday.
She “runs in, sees the horror of it all, makes an exclamation and runs out,” Mr. Spota said.
The footage seems to suggest that Ms. Brady may not have expected the violence inside the Medford store as she waited in the parking lot. Prosecutors have accused her fiance, David S. Laffer, of killing two workers and two customers, and then robbing the store of thousands of prescription pills.
On Thursday, Mr. Laffer was formally charged with five counts of first-degree murder, one for each of the victims and an additional count for killing the four during the same crime in which he killed the first. He is also charged with four counts of criminal use of a firearm. Mr. Laffer was heard to say only the word “yes” to Judge James Hudson one time. Other times he stood and nodded nervously.
If convicted, Mr. Laffer, 33, could face five consecutive terms of life in prison without parole, an assistant district attorney, John B. Collins, told Judge Hudson inside the courtroom, which included around 20 friends and family members of the victims, some weeping.
“He should spend the rest of his life behind bars without ever seeing the light of day,” Mr. Spota said, “without the hope of ever having even one day of freedom.”
Mr. Spota said that Ms. Brady, 29, who has been charged only with third-degree robbery and obstructing governmental administration, identified Mr. Laffer as the man who exited the pharmacy after the killings.
Mr. Spota said that Mr. Laffer had scouted the area for weeks for a pharmacy to rob and was outside Haven Drugs the night before the killings. Yet during a videotaped interrogation, Mr. Laffer denied being at the pharmacy.
On Thursday, Mr. Spota also offered new details culled from scenes from the pharmacy’s motion-activated surveillance cameras, which also recorded sound.
The gunman walked in with a black backpack, placing it on the counter with his right arm inside, presumably holding the gun, Mr. Spota said. As the gunman asked the pharmacist, Raymond A. Ferguson Jr., 45, a series of innocuous questions about the interaction of two medications, the video shows him raising up the black bag and firing a shot through the fabric and into Mr. Ferguson’s abdomen, Mr. Spota said.
The video then shows the gunman lifting the countertop and charging into an alcove after the second victim, Jennifer Mejia, 17, a store employee who had left the counter area because the gunman had asked to speak to the pharmacist in private, Mr. Spota said. The sounds of two gunshots and Ms. Mejia’s screams are heard on the video before it shows the gunman returning to Mr. Ferguson, who was lying on his back, holding his wounds and moaning. The video shows the gunman shooting Mr. Ferguson twice in the head at point-blank range, Mr. Spota said.
The video shows the gunman loading his backpack with prescription pills until he saw someone approaching the store, Mr. Spota said. The gunman ran to the door and shot the third victim, Bryon Wesley Sheffield, 71, in the back of the head as soon as he walked in, Mr. Spota said. The gunman did the same to Jaimie Lee Taccetta, 33, moments later.
“Mr. Sheffield and Ms. Taccetta never even knew the killer was in the store,” Mr. Spota said.
Mr. Spota added that investigators found seven bullet casings at the scene, which all appeared to match the .45-caliber handgun that Mr. Laffer owned. Investigators also found more than 1,000 hydrocodone pills at Mr. Laffer’s house, Mr. Spota said. In addition, investigators found a tube of mascara in Mr. Laffer’s car, which they believed he used to darken and thicken his beard and eyebrows to disguise himself during the attack, Mr. Spota said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment