Robbery Suspect Shot After Police Tracked Him Down — but Wait Until You Hear How They Found Him

A man who stole prescription painkillers was tracked down -- and later fatally shot -- by police monitoring a GPS unit inside the bottle.

Decoy pill bottles like this one have been used by NYPD for the last year to help track theft suspects. (Image source: WNBC-TV)

According to WNBC-TV, 45-year-old Scott Kato robbed a pharmacy in Manhattan of cash and pain pills Friday, fleeing in his car. Inside the bottle he had taken wasn't pills though but a device that pinpointed Kato's whereabouts. The New York Times reported it was the first known time a GPS-equipped bait bottle had led to a suspect in the city, after the the New York Police Department last year announced it would start planting them to combat the growing black market for prescription drugs. Police opened fire on Kato when they caught up to him, saying they saw him reaching for his own gun, which was later recovered by authorities. "He was stuck in traffic,” a police source told the New York Daily News. “They blocked his car. He couldn’t go anywhere. They got out of the car. They came up on him. He reached for the gun.” Police believe Kato had targeted this and other stores in the last few years for pills. They found other bottles of painkillers on the scene. “They got him,” Boris Elkin, the pharmacist and owner of HealthSource Pharmacy, told the Daily News. “Thank God we are all right. It’s just sad someone had to die.”

Police suspect Kato is the same man who robbed the pharmacy last year and was spotted on surveillance cameras. (Image source: WNBC-TV)

Watch the owner talk about the repeated robberies in WNBC-TV's report:

According to WCBS-TV, the shooting by NYPD officers was the third to happen on Friday.