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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: North Bergen police suspect a township man charged with two drug store holdups might be the same one who robbed $10,000 worth of OxyContin from a Hoboken CVS just last month.
Ryan P. Henry, 32, is suspected in yet another Hoboken holdup, said North Bergen Capt. Robert Dowd, whose department forwarded his photo to their counterparts in the Mile Square City.
The 900 heroin-like painkillers were taken by an average-looking guy fitting Henry’s description — about 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds — in early August. Police said he told the clerk at the downtown CVS at Newark and Washington streets that he had a gun.
Pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma, which has seen more than its share of break-ins and holdups since the “hillbilly heroin” hit the market, had offered a reward for information leading to an arrest.
That may end up going to a Bangladeshi cab driver from Manhattan who witnessed another CVS holdup — this one on Tuesday in the Nungesser’s section of North Bergen — and told police.
Henry took 200 Oxycontin pills after telling the clerk he had a gun, township police said. They said he also hit the same Bergenline Avenue store in July.
The cabbie, who’d given him a ride to the store from Manhattan, chased Henry into James J. Braddock (formerly known as North Hudson County Park), where the suspect called his mom. She took both men to a nearby ATM for the $60 fare, a spokesman for the township said.
Police mistakenly took the non-English-speaking driver into custody after a drug store employee pointed him out, but he led them to the ATM and detectives tracked down Henry, he said.
Henry is being held on $100,000 bail in Hudson County Jail pending the outcome of the investigation in Hoboken.
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