CHARMAINE Forbes threw caution to the wind when she chased a man after a hold-up at an Albury pharmacy yesterday.
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She followed the man’s car and reported its registration number to police.
Police said that information had led to a speedy arrest.
A man, 52, has been charged with armed robbery with an offensive weapon and was refused bail yesterday.
He is due to appear in Albury Local Court today.
Miss Forbes said she had been using an ATM outside Fifield’s Family Pharmacy in Dean Street.
She was walking back to her car when a man pushed her into a display of products on the footpath just after 9.30am.
He was wearing a hoodie and a handkerchief covered his face.
He entered the pharmacy and produced a knife.
“I just thought he was in a hurry to get into the chemist and pick up his medication,” Miss Forbes said.
“Next thing I know he’s got a big knife and is yelling ‘I want all the morphine and all the Xanax, I want it all’.”
A pharmacy employee put some medication in the man’s green shopping bag and he fled on foot to the Centro car park.
Miss Forbes and her partner gave chase.
“I jumped in the car and we followed into the car park,” she said.
“I saw him get in a white Ford Falcon and grabbed the number plate and called police.”
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The pair followed the car north along Kiewa Street before losing it.
Miss Forbes’ information led police to a George Street home unit where they arrested a man.
His car was seized and along with some medication.
Miss Forbes said she was feeling “anxious” about the incident but was glad she had chased the man.
“Instinct kicked in, I’m a regular customer here and it’s horrible what’s happened to them,” she said.
“They’re lovely people and they shouldn’t have to put up with this.”
The pharmacy, on the corner of Dean and Townsend streets, has been targeted in the past.
In September 2009 a 19-year-old Albury man used a syringe filled with his own hepatitis-infected blood in an attempted robbery at the pharmacy.
And in July last year an Albury man broke into the pharmacy twice, making off with medications.
