Greenough pleads in pharmacy robbery

Staff report

A Havre man accused in connection with the July 21 robbery and theft of thousands of prescription pills from a Havre pharmacy has pleaded guilty in a plea agreement.

Ryan M. Greenough, born in 1983, pleaded guilty to criminal possession of drugs with the intent to distribute in an amended set of charges and to use or possession of property subject to forfeiture.

State District Judge Dan Boucher set sentencing for Jan. 5.

The other defendant in the case, Arlene Morsette, is scheduled to go to trial Jan. 20.

A caller to Havre police on July 22 reported Greenough was selling large amounts of prescription medication. That led to the charges, along with the arrest and charging of Arlene Morsette on multiple counts including robbery, assault with a weapon, tampering with evidence and endangering the welfare of a child.

She is accused of using a spray-painted BB gun in the theft of more than 6,000 prescription painkillers and about $400 in cash July 21 from Western Drug Pharmacy. Police said she then discarded the gun, her clothes and the prescription packaging and picked up her 4-month-old daughter. She kept the child with her while selling the drugs from a hotel room in Havre, police said.

Greenough and Morsette both were in the Hill County jail this morning.

Greenough, a Havre resident, rented the hotel room for two days and was in the room with Morsette, who was born in 1984, and her daughter when drug task force agents, police and a probation and parole officer searched the room.

Officers obtained a search warrant and then found more than 4,900 prescription pills of the types stolen from the pharmacy July 21, the document says.

Greenough has a lengthy history involving illegal drugs.

He was sentenced in 2003 on charges of possession of drugs with intent to distribute and possessing property subject to forfeiture.

In 2005 he was sentenced to six years with the Department of Corrections for committing 21 violations of his release on that sentence, and a month later to three years suspended for new drug charges, to run after serving his six-year sentence.

In 2012 he was resentenced to three years suspended for violating conditions of his release in the 2004 charges, and in 2013 to five years suspended, to run at the same time as the 2012 sentence, on a new drug distribution charge to which he pleaded guilty in a plea agreement.

July 22, Greenough told an officer who interviewed him outside of the hotel room that Morsette contacted him after the robbery and gave him a large amount of cash to use in renting the room, the court document says. He said she hid a large amount of pills in gallon-sized plastic bags inside the ceiling tiles of the room and also hid small bags of pills throughout the room, the document says.