An Edmonton man who robbed a St. Albert pharmacy twice in the space of eight days has been released on day parole.
Mohammed Ismail Arafa was granted day parole on July 7, allowing him to stay at a halfway house and requiring him to return there each evening.
In May 2009, Arafa pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery, two counts of using an imitation firearm and one count of uttering a death threat.
He was originally sentenced to seven years in jail, but the court of appeal overturned the sentence, lowering it to five years.
Both incidents, one in late December 2007 and another in January 2008, occurred at the Health Select Pharmacy, recently renamed Health Select Remedy’s RX, in the Tudor Glen Plaza.
In both cases Arafa produced a replica 9mm handgun and demanded Oxycontin, a powerful narcotic.
In its decision, the parole board noted Arafa’s addiction to the painkiller led him to commit the robberies.
“When your addiction became out of control, your way of supporting it was to commit crimes to obtain more drugs.”
Arafa became addicted to Oxycontin after he was first prescribed it following a serious car crash.
In the first robbery, he fled the pharmacy with almost 400 tablets. During the second robbery, he took 200 tablets and then demanded another drug, Percocet. The clerk didn’t have any, but gave him 750 tablets of Endocet, a similar medication.
While fleeing the first robbery, he told the young woman working not to call anyone or he would kill her.
Her victim impact statement, presented during sentencing, suggested she took those words seriously and feared for her life when he returned the second time.
The parole board was impressed with a variety of drug treatment programs Arafa took in jail and a continuing track record of clean drug tests.
It was also pleased to see him take responsibility for his actions.
“You do not minimize the seriousness of your actions and you expressed what appears to be sincere remorse for the harm you caused the victim of two of the robberies,” it wrote. “You stated that ‘nobody deserves what I put her through.’”
Arafa was applying for full parole, but the board didn’t think he was ready for that much freedom.
“You have not been exposed to high-risk situations and dealing with every day stressors that you will witness and experience when in the community and therefore you remain untested.”
While on parole Arafa will be on a condition to abstain completely from drugs. He has an exemption for prescription drugs, but only if he is taking them as recommended.
