Police fatally shot a serial pharmacy robber on the Upper East Side yesterday. Police say that Scott Kato, 45, robbed HealthSource Pharmacy, at Second Avenue and East 68th Street, around 1:30 p.m. Friday; they say Kato was believed to have robbed that particular pharmacy five times since 2011. Police were able to track Kato down quickly yesterday because he stole a decoy pill bottle equipped with a GPS device.
Kato, who had taken various bottles of pills (prescription painkillers and erectile-enhancement pills) and cash from the pharmacy, was confronted by cops at a service road near the FDR Drive on 96th Street around 2 p.m. Police say they fatally shot him after he reached for a gun. "I heard the 10 shots fired and saw a swarm of cops,” witness Oneil Dixon told the Post. "Cops surrounded him and he pulled a gun on the cops. The guy was stupid. Where did he think he was going to go?" Kato served about 16 years in prison during two stints between 1990 and 2008 for sexual abuse and robbery convictions.
The NYPD started tagging drugstore prescription bottles with GPS chips in hopes of tracking thieves last year; the NY Times reports that this is the first known case in which a decoy bottle helped police track down a suspect.
