GREENVILLE – A town native with a lengthy criminal record will face extradition to Texas later this month on an armed robbery charge after being arrested early Tuesday, police said.
Nathan Dilworth, 30, of Katahdin Circle, was charged shortly after midnight with being a fugitive from justice. He is being held today without bail at the Piscataquis County Jail awaiting extradition, a jail spokesman said.
Dilworth, Police Chief Scott MacMaster said, was arrested after Sgt. Jeff Pomerleau got a telephone call from a convenience store clerk at a Route 15 convenience store at about 9:45 p.m. Monday. The clerk said she had seen Dilworth in her store that evening.
Familiar with Dilworth due to his having been convicted of stealing about $10,000 worth of drugs from Harris Drug Store in 2003, among other things, Pomerleau ran a National Crime Information Center search on Dilworth and learned that he was wanted in San Antonio, Texas on an armed robbery charge, MacMaster said.
Pomerleau telephoned MacMaster at home, and, accompanied by a Piscataquis County deputy sheriff, visited the home of Dilworth’s mother at the Pritham Park housing complex on Katahdin Circle. There they found Dilworth and arrested him, MacMaster said.
“What it comes down to, I would say, is community policing in that somebody from the community identified this individual and told us that he was back,” MacMaster said Tuesday, “and we were able to get a potentially dangerous person off the street.
“She [the clerk] did an excellent job by notifying us,” he added.
MacMaster declined to identify the clerk or the store at which she worked, saying that she might fear retribution. Route 15 has many convenience stores, he said.
Dilworth, pleaded guilty to burglary and theft at Harris Drug Store in 2004 and was sentenced to two years in prison on each count. He served the concurrent sentences with all but six months suspended, including two years on probation.
Dilworth was among two burglars who pried open a door located off an alleyway to gain entry into the drugstore and took about 700 OxyContin pills of varying strengths, 50 injectable doses of morphine, 100 tablets of Endocet, which is a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen, and about 400 tablets of morphine sulfate, according to police reports.
Also taken in the break-in was $370 from a small metal cash box and $50 in rolled quarters.
The total value of the drugs, damage to the store and money was placed at about $10,000, MacMaster said.
San Antonio police could not immediately provide details of the armed robbery arrest warrant on Tuesday.
Dilworth is due in Dover-Foxcroft District Court on Jan. 5.