Feb 24, 2017 3 min read

CARMICHAELS – It has been more than a year since Gabler’s Drug Store in Carmichaels was robbed twice in nine days, but the pharmacist on duty during both encounters with the bearded suspect remembered one key detail of the man wearing a hoodie over his head.

“His eyes are pretty,” Barbara Struhar said. “They were piercing, and they’re piercing now.”

Struhar identified Joshua Cain Abel, sitting just a few feet away from her while she testified during his preliminary hearing Thursday afternoon, as the man who entered Gabler’s twice last January and pushed forward notes demanding prescription drugs.

Abel, 30, of Everson, also has been charged with robbing or attempting to rob five other pharmacies in Pennsylvania and West Virginia during a two-week period. He was arrested Feb. 3, 2016, in West Virginia and pleaded guilty to one of the cases in that state, and already has served his sentence there, said his defense attorney, Komron Jon Maknoon. He is awaiting trial on similar charges in Fayette and Westmoreland counties.

State police said Abel walked into Gabler’s at 106 S. Market St. the first time Jan. 16 and pushed forward a note to workers claiming he had a gun and demanding drugs. Struhar said she did not recall what the note said, but that she was fearful, so she retrieved bottles of prescription drugs, which she believed were filled with Oxycodone.

“I just went, ‘OK then,'” Struhar said as she threw up her hands. “Before he got out of the store, I was talking to 911.”

The same man returned nine days later – once again wearing a hoodie over his head and surgical gloves on his hands – and pushed forward another note to pharmacy technician Brittaney Courie. This time, the staff was on alert from the earlier incident.

“We had been on edge from it after it happened the previous week,” Courie said. “We’d been looking out.”

She looked over to Struhar and told her to “press the button” to alert authorities of a robbery, prompting the man to immediately leave.

“I just felt I didn’t have to give it to him and he’d leave,” Struhar said.

Maknoon tried to undermine the witnesses’ identification of the robber. Courie picked Abel from a police photo lineup and once again identified him in the courtroom, but Maknoon pointed out the encounter in the store lasted only seven seconds.

Maknoon also questioned why Struhar couldn’t remember what the first note said.

“It’s been a year, and I really haven’t thought of it,” Struhar said.

Maknoon said the felony robbery charges should be withdrawn or reduced since neither witness testified the note stated the robber had a gun, and a weapon was never shown.

“There’s no threat in the note,” Maknoon claimed. “The thing we’re missing is the gun.”

District Judge Lee Watson disagreed and ordered Abel to stand trial on all charges, including felony charges of robbery, criminal attempt and three misdemeanor counts each of terroristic threats and simple assault, along with one count of theft. He is being held at the Greene County jail on $75,000 bond while awaiting trial on the three cases in Westmoreland, Fayette and Greene counties.

An alleged accomplice in the case, Alicia Ashton, 27, of Monongahela Township, is awaiting trial in Fayette County on charges she helped Abel rob a pharmacy in South Union Township during the alleged spree.