A pharmacist has described the "shock" of being confronted with a knife-wielding robber demanding morphine.

Twenty-nine-year-old Peter Lloyd was sentenced to 28 months in prison for the armed raid on Gardners Chemist in Greenmount, Bury at Bolton Crown Court on August 11.

Mr Lloyd "shook up" staff by putting a long blade and a hammer on the pharmacy counter in the incident on May 19, Gardners Chemist's director Erez Bar-Ilan told C+D yesterday (August 21).

Mr Lloyd was acting in a "subdued, threatening" manner and Mr Bar-Ilan went to open the controlled drugs cabinet in an attempt to appease him, he told C+D.

When Mr Bar-Ilan returned, he was "shocked" to find Mr Lloyd helping himself to bottles of Oramorph from the dispensary, he said. Mr Bar-Ilan handed over controlled drugs from the cabinet and asked Mr Lloyd to leave. "I just wanted him out," he said. "You don't know what someone like that is going to be capable of."

After Mr Lloyd left the pharmacy, Mr Bar-Ilan followed him and informed the police of his location. "That's how they got him," he explained. Such incidents were "very rare" in the pharmacy's area, he told C+D.

Mr Bar-Ilan added that pharmacy staff had been drilled on how to use panic buttons, which had been used on the day of the robbery, since the incident.

	Have staff at your pharmacy ever been threatened with violence?