MAN CHARGED WITH TAKING DRUGS FROM EMPLOYER

Police arrested an 18-year-old Raleigh man Thursday and charged him with
taking hundreds of dosage units of prescription drugs from a local pharmacy
where he worked and giving them to friends, according to court records.

Gregory Mark Wootton, of 7114 Broomfield Way, was arrested shortly before 6
p.m.

He was charged with felony embezzlement after a lengthy internal
investigation by officials with Eckerd Inc., where he had been employed for
more than a year, according to court officials and records.

Less than one hour before his arrest, Wootton prepared a two-page written
statement for Eckerd officials that was filed Thursday at the Wake
Magistrate's Office.

Wootton first began working for the pharmacy at 7440 Creedmoor Road in
August 2000 as a photo technician. In January, he started working as a
pharmacy technician, according to his written statement.

By early summer of last year, Wootton wrote, an unnamed friend approached
him and asked whether he could get him "something."

"By that, he meant hydrocodone," Wootton wrote.

Hydrocodone is a Schedule III narcotic painkiller under the North Carolina
Controlled Substances Act.

Wootton admitted to taking a bottle of 100 hydrocodone tablets and giving
it to the friend, who did not pay the pharmacy and did not have a
prescription, Wootton wrote in his statement, written in the presence of
two Eckerd officials.

The suspect told the company officials he thought it was a one-time
request. Instead, the friend returned asking for more and also sent other
friends to obtain a variety of unprescribed drugs.

"Over the past five or six months, I have taken other drugs to give to
friends without paying," Wootton wrote.

The young man then provided investigators with a list of all the drugs he
could remember taking during that period, according to the written statement.

Among the drugs Wootton confessed to taking from the pharmacy were 1,000
hydrocodone tablets, 200 Valium tablets, between 400 and 500 diazepam
tablets, 100 xanax tablets, 500 alprazolam tablets, 100 klonopin tablets,
200 clonazepam tablets, 100 cylert tablets and an undisclosed number of
lorezepam tablets.

Wootton told investigators he took the cylert last week for himself because
he was working so hard.

Cylert is a stimulant commonly used to treat children with
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The other drugs Wootton listed in the statement are all Schedule IV
anti-depressants.

Wootton expressed remorse in the statement that he wrote Thursday. "I wish
I could bring some of them back," he said about the drugs. "But I have
given them all away."

The Raleigh man was the second teenager arrested this week for taking
prescription drugs from the pharmacy where they were employed.

Quinci Margaret-Jean Phillips, 17, a 12th-grader at Garner High School, was
arrested Tuesday and charged with taking prescription drugs from a CVS
Pharmacy where she worked.

Wootton was taken into custody at the Wake County jail and placed under a
$75,000 secured bond.

Staff writer Thomasi McDonald can be reached at 829-4533 or
tmcdonal@newsobserver.com