As he was held at gunpoint and forced to lay face down on the floor of an East Harlem drugstore, grisly scenes from last year’s Long Island pharmacy massacre flashed through his mind.
Quick-thinking Alex Cary, the manager of the RX Center Pharmacy on East 119th Street, was able to trigger a panic button moments after two gun-toting thugs burst into his store Thursday.
“I was scared!” said Cary. “He was pointing a gun at us . . . and just then, you know what flashed through my mind? The Long Island pharmacy massacre.”
Cary said he fixated on last year’s heist in which pill-head David Laffer gunned down four people while robbing a drug store in Medford, LI.
Thursday’s holdup had a far different ending — retired NYPD Lt. Thomas Barnes, 48, blew away Wyatt Rudolph, 23, when the thug tried to shoot three cops. The second robber escaped.
Barnes had been across the street gassing up his car when he saw Rudolph run from the pharmacy. That’s when the ex-cop sprang into action.
“I’m just happy to be here with my family,” Barnes said yesterday. “I’m happy to be alive, I’m happy the officers are alive and all of the civilians in the store and on the street — there were a lot of people walking around.”
Barnes’s wife, Elizabeth, said she is still shaken by the incident.
“I thought this was all over with. I was worried about him for 21 years on the job. He wasn’t on the police force anymore so I didn’t think I’d have to worry about him in that way.”