Posted on 02/06/2003 8:07:29 AM PST by Hemingway's Ghost
A state trooper who was popping prescription painkillers to beat a career-threatening injury was arrested yesterday on charges he knocked off a Natick drug store's OxyContin supply at gunpoint the day after Christmas.
Christopher Shields, 41, who's been on medical leave for more than a year, was picked up at an undisclosed health-care facility in Worcester where authorities said he checked in after getting bagged shoplifting soda, DVDs and magazines in Sudbury last Thursday.
``There are some personal problems going on here we hope to be able to assist him with, but he's made his bed and he's pretty much going to have to sleep in it,'' state police Col. Thomas Foley said of the 17-year veteran. ``There's no special treatment for him.''
Shields, a Sudbury resident, was tracked down by fellow law enforcers who matched his booking photo from his arrest at Sudbury Farms Market to video from the holdup at a Natick CVS Pharmacy.
Shields' lawyer, Mike Brennan, said the Massachusetts Turnpike patrol officer who once probed Middlesex County homicides, denies doing the OxyContin robbery.
Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley said Shields entered the CVS Dec. 26 and ``both showed a note and demanded verbally that the pharmacist on duty turn over all the available OxyContin to him. He opened his jacket to display a handgun.''
The druggist gave Shields three partially full bottles of the superpotent pain paralyzer, Coakley said.
Foley said state police have confiscated at least two handguns from the troubled trooper and suspended him without pay.
Shields, the father of 4-year-old twin daughters, is separated from his wife, his lawyer said, and desperately wanted to overcome back and knee injuries he suffered at the Weston barracks when a ramp he was standing on gave way and tumbled him onto a cruiser.
``He seemed a little bit down,'' Brennan said. ``Everyone wanted to get him back to work.''
Brennan said Shields was prescribed painkillers but he does not know if they included OxyContin, or if Shields was addicted.
Shields was ordered held on $25,000 cash bail after his arraignment yesterday in Natick District Court on armed robbery and drug possession charges.
I can't imagine a worse hell for a cop gone bad than General Population . . .
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