Thursday, October 1, 2026
A man who was convicted of a shoplifting spree and the carjacking of an East Rockaway woman last April has been sentenced to 3½ to 7 years in prison.
According to Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas, Alexander Wachmyanin, 50, who has no known address, carried out the robberies, targeting a number of businesses, including several CVS locations, in East Rockaway, Garden City, Hewlett, Westbury and West Hempstead.
Wachmyanin’s spree began on Jan. 14, 2015, Singas said, when he stole products from a Westbury Rite Aid. On April 14, he took merchandise from two CVS stores, one in Hewlett and two in East Rockaway.
On April 22, according to Singas, Wachmyanin returned to the CVS on Ocean Avenue in East Rockaway, where he was observed stealing merchandise again and was chased from the store by employees. In a struggle outside, the employees managed to recover the stolen property, but Wachmyanin fled through the residential streets behind the store.
There, according to court documents, he confronted a woman who was getting out of her 2010 Toyota Corolla. The woman screamed, and two of her neighbors came to her aid, attempting to pull Wachmyanin out of her running vehicle, but he drove in reverse at high speed, hitting one man with an open car door and striking another’s parked car, causing substantial damage to its front end.
Wachmyanin then put the car in drive, drove over a curb and across the woman’s front lawn, and fled the scene, headed east. The man who was struck by the car door suffered a cracked rib and other injuries.
Singas said that Wachmyanin’s spree continued on May 24, when he stole merchandise from a CVS in West Hempstead. He then stole from a Garden City Key Food on June 25 and 26. Among the items he made off with were over-the-counter medicines, hair treatment products and razors.
As the Herald reported last year, Nassau County police, using eyewitness accounts after the April 22 incident, arrested a different suspect at his home in Holtsville, and charged him with robbing the CVS on Ocean Avenue and stealing the woman’s car. But after an investigation that included the examination of a store video and DNA from the crime scene, the man was released, and Wachmyanin was arrested on June 28 in Hempstead by the NCPD’s Department of Special Operations.
On Jan. 15 of this year, he pleaded guilty to third-degree robbery, and was ordered to pay just over $30,000 in restitution.
“This defendant terrorized businesses and customers in Nassau County for six months,” Singas said. “Thankfully, this shoplifting spree has come to an end, and he will spend the next several years thinking about all the harm he has caused.”
