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Describe the general situation at the present with the addicted person.
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Massachusetts Drug Rehab and Alcohol, News
A desperate Reading couple whose smack-addicted son allegedly went on a bank-robbing
rampage to nurture his drug affair helped put him behind bars to get him off
the streets, Massachusetts police said.
Gregory Stratton, 24, was awakened and arrested Friday morning inside a suspected
Allston drug den, thanks in part to information provided by his parents.
"The amount of heroin he claimed he was using per day was staggering to
all of the officers involved," said Sgt. Mark Lynch of the Massachusetts
State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Task Force. "He was on the fast
road to a tragedy."
A visibly upset Geo and Carol Stratton declined comment Friday at their son's
arraignment in Lynn District Court for the June 12 armed robbery of a Sovereign
Bank in Saugus. He was ordered held on $100,000 cash bail.
According to Saugus police logs, a 1991 Honda Accord registered to Stratton
was identified as the suspected getaway car in the robbery.
More charges are imminent, according to police who suspect the former University
of Massachusetts at Amherst student of knocking off eight banks in Wakefield,
Woburn, Lynnfield, Beverly, Burlington, Stoneham, Medford and Saugus Massachusetts
in the past five weeks.
"What they want to do is the right thing for everybody," Arthur Carakatsane,
Stratton's court-appointed attorney, said on behalf of the defendant's parents.
"This is their only child. They need time to breathe and figure it all
out. This is probably the lowest week of their lives."
Lynch said Stratton robbed the Saugus bank after carjacking a woman in Reading,
Massachusetts at knifepoint, but Carakatsane is challenging him to prove it.
"Any evidence as far as Mr. Stratton is concerned is sketchy at best,"
he sniffed.
And although the state, Boston, Reading and Medford cops who captured Stratton
confiscated "200-plus" grams of heroin, as well as hypodermic syringes
and cash from the Kelton Street apartment, Carakatsane claimed drug abuse "is
not in his history. He has no (criminal) record."
"He strikes me as a normal 24-year-old," he said.
Lynch said Stratton, who attempted to hide his face from cameras in the courtroom,
has been "tentatively ID'd" as having committed the bank robberies
in Lynnfield, Beverly, Wakefield and Stoneham, Massachusetts.
"He's the product of a middle-class, nice family," Lynch said. "Somehow,
he got hooked up in heroin. Hopefully, we shortstopped disaster."
