The drug fiend who massacred four people at a pharmacy coldly executed them one by one at close range before filling a backpack with pills and strolling away.
A newly installed security camera captured the methodical murders inside the Long Island mom-and-pop business. Cops said it was the worst thing they'd ever seen.
"It's the most vicious crime that I have encountered," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said Monday.
The victims, who ranged in age from 71 to 17, "were shot very suddenly, and very quickly," he said.
"They offered no resistance and did not appear to provoke the assault. They were all shot at close range."
The store had a policy of cooperating with armed robbers, and the two customers, the pharmacist and his teenage helper were "killed for no apparent reason," Dormer said.
A massive manhunt was on last night. Independent pharmacists were warned to be on the lookout for a gun-toting addict with little left to lose.
"We believe the suspect is a drug user and should be considered armed and dangerous," Dormer warned.
Police circulated photos showing a skinny white man with short, dark hair and a scraggly beard wearing a white cap, sunglasses, a dark hooded sweatshirt and jeans.
Dormer offered a $5,000 reward and promised the grieving families his cops were doing all they could.
"We are committed to locating the cold-blooded killer responsible for this heinous crime," he said.
The suspect walked into Haven Drugs in Medford just after 10 a.m. Sunday and used a handgun to kill everyone in the store. Then he filled his backpack with "oxycodone-like" prescription painkillers and left, Dormer said.
Police were called to the store by James Manzella, who went inside to see why it was taking his fiancée, Jaime Taccetta, so long to fill her thyroid prescription.
Manzella found bodies: Taccetta, 33; pharmacist Raymond Ferguson, 45; his assistant, Jennifer Mejia, 17, and another customer, Bryon Sheffield, 71.
Mejia's 16-year-old sister, Leslie - who also worked at the drugstore but happened to take Sunday off - burst into tears when she visited a makeshift memorial outside the shuttered pharmacy. "My sister was a good person. She didn't deserve to die - not like that," the girl said.
Jennifer Mejia, who liked working in the pharmacy because she hoped to be a doctor, will be laid to rest Thursday - the same day she was supposed to graduate from Bellport High School.
Family priest Freddy Lozano of Brookhaven Catholic Church said Mejia took part in a service on Saturday.
"She handed out the bread and wine. The next day she gave her life," he said. "No one understands this."
Ralph Taccetta said his daughter, a physical therapist at St.Charles Hospital in Centereach, was supposed to get married next month.
"She was an angel to everyone she met. Everyone loved her. This is unbelievable," he said as he prepared to go to the airport to pick up his wife, who was returning from Jamaica with her mother and was still oblivious.
Like Mejia, who had been excitedly modeling her prom dress, Taccetta recently had brought home her wedding gown.
A friend, Dave Pincus, said he couldn't understand why a thief had to take lives. "Why not just take the money?" he said.
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