An Erie man accused of using a note and the threat of a gun to steal cash from a westside Rite Aid store in November has been indicted federally in the crime.

A federal grand jury indicted 58-year-old Raymond J. Churilla Jr. on one count of Hobbs Act robbery, a robbery that affects interstate commerce, in the robbery of the Rite Aid store at 163 W. 26th St. on the morning of Nov. 28. The indictment was filed in U.S. District Court in Erie on Tuesday.

The charge Churilla faces carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to information in an indictment memorandum also filed on Tuesday.

Churilla is currently in the Erie County Prison on $35,000 bond on charges including three felony counts of robbery that Erie police filed against him in the Rite Aid heist. Churilla was awaiting his formal arraignment in Erie County Court of Common Pleas after he waived his preliminary hearing on the charges in late December.

Rite Aid robbery

Erie police accuse Churilla in the Rite Aid robbery of walking into the store wearing a red jacket and a blue mask and handing an employee a note which stated he had a gun and demanded cash. Churilla then fled after stealing a few hundred dollars from the Rite Aid, according to investigators.

Detectives wrote in Churilla’s criminal complaint that they located surveillance video that showed the suspect removing the red jacket and disposing of it near a parked vehicle. Police recovered the jacket and found items including a handwritten note, a debit card and a pack of cigarettes in it, according to information in the complaint.

Fingerprints found on items in the jacket were examined and showed preliminary indications that they belonged to Churilla, according to information in the complaint. Investigators said the robbery suspect’s features, including the suspect’s build and nose, were consistent with Churilla’s features.

Other crimes

At the time of the Rite Aid robbery, Churilla was on probation following his sentencing in 2022 in Erie County Veterans Court on a burglary charge that the Pennsylvania State Police filed against him in an incident in Erie in 2020, according to court records.

Churilla was also sentenced in Veterans Court in 2022 to serve 201 to 402 days in jail, with credit for 201 days he already served, on his guilty plea to a charge of robbery of a financial institution. Millcreek Township police charged Churilla with robbing a Marquette Savings Bank branch in the township by using a note on Aug. 14, 2021. Churilla’s confinement in the bank robbery case was made concurrent with his probation in the burglary case, according to court records.

Churilla was additionally sentenced in Veterans Court in 2022 on a felony count of receiving stolen property and a misdemeanor count of theft from a motor vehicle in two Erie police cases from 2021. City police accused him in one of the cases of stealing lunch boxes from a plumbing company’s van, and in the other case of taking a vehicle containing a gun from the parking lot of the same Rite Aid store he is accused of robbing in November. The sentences Churilla received in those cases were also made concurrent to his probation sentence in the burglary case, according to court records.

Contact Tim Hahn at thahn@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNhahn.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Federal grand jury indicts Erie man in robbery of Rite Aid store