Free Republic

<p>RIVERHEAD, N.Y. -- A New Yorker facing first-degree murder charges in the shooting of four people at a Long Island pharmacy has been excused from jury duty.</p>

He did it for her. Suspected pill addict David Laffer has been charged with slaughtering four people in a Long Island pharmacy to score a bag full of painkillers for his nagging, drug-addled wife, who was his getaway driver after the Father's Day massacre, police and witnesses said yesterday. "He was doing it because he lost his job and I was sick," his wife, Melinda Laffer, confessed to reporters as she was walked out of Suffolk County police headquarters in Yaphank early today. When asked what she would tell the families of the victims, she said, "I'm sorry that he...

Following a three-day manhunt, an unemployed Army veteran was arrested today for allegedly killing four people at a Long Island pharmacy, and later identified as the shooter by a witness in a police lineup, authorities said. David Laffer, 33, was arrested by Suffolk County police at about 10 a.m. at his Medford home. Shortly after Laffer's arrest, his wife Melinda Brady, 29, was also taken into custody, cuffed and placed in another car. Sources said Laffer's wife is believed to have driven the getaway car following the massacre. The fiance of one of the shooting victims, James Manzella, was waiting...

YAPHANK, N.Y. (AP) -- Four people killed during a pharmacy store robbery in suburban New York City, including a teenager due to graduate high school this week, were shot at very close range by a dangerous suspect intent on stealing painkillers, a police official said Monday. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer also warned physicians and the owners of small drugstores in the area to be vigilant about anyone "expressing an urgent need for prescription painkillers.

Police have identified the man they say shot and killed four people inside a New York pharmacy over the weekend, the New York Post reports.

The massacre happened at about 10:20 a.m. inside a family-owned pharmacy in a small cluster of medical offices in Medford, a middle-class hamlet on Long Island about 60 miles east of New York City.Police rushed to the scene after getting a 911 call from someone in the pharmacy's parking lot. When they arrived, they found two employees and two customers dead, said Suffolk County Police Department's Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone. No one inside the shop survived.Suffolk County Police identified the dead employees as Raymond Ferguson, 45, of Centereach, and Jennifer Mejia, 17, of East Patchogue. Bryon Sheffield, 71, of...

MEDFORD, N.Y. (AP) -- A gunman shot four people inside a pharmacy in a New York suburb Sunday morning, killing everyone inside the store in what police said looked like a robbery gone wrong. The massacre happened at about 10:20 a.m. inside a family-owned pharmacy in a small cluster of medical offices in Medford, a middle-class hamlet on Long Island about 60 miles east of New York City.