Betsy Kline
Castlegar News
A Castlegar resident has pleaded guilty to the robbery of the local Husky station on June 7.
Aaron Michael Ryan Lich, 29, appeared in Nelson provincial court a week ago Wednesday.
Lich was denied bail and will remain in custody. The case was put over until July 22 in Castlegar for a pre-sentence report.
According to RCMP, Lich entered the store and browsed inside for several minutes before threatening to produce a weapon, demanding money and then fleeing with an undisclosed amount of cash. He was apprehended a short time later.
Husky manager Happy Singh said only one employee was at the store at the time, who was frightened after the robber stated he had a knife in his pocket.
“The employee got scared, so obviously, the employee opened the till because he wanted to save his life,” said Singh. “So he opened the till and the man got all of the money from the till except for some coins.”
Singh also explained that police quickly arrived on the scene, took a statement from the employee, collected evidence for fingerprinting and reviewed security tapes. He found out the next morning that they had already caught the suspect.
“Our employee is good. No life is gone. Everything is fine, just the money is gone,” said Singh.