Top Star Exxon, 1570 Main St., Hellertown (FILE PHOTO)
UPDATE: According to court records Martha Toukolehto was committed to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail following an arraignment before District Judge Alan Mege Wednesday morning.
Hellertown woman is charged with robbing the Top Star Exxon convenience store at 1570 Main Street of cash after police say she entered it shortly after midnight, threatened the clerk with a metal bar, demanded money from the register and then fled with cash.
In a news release Wednesday, police said that before 32-year-old Martha Helen Toukolehto, of the 200 block of E. High Street, robbed the gas station she also committed a burglary at Lost River Caverns, 726 Durham Street, in which she allegedly damaged a window and “many” glass display cases and stole thousands of dollars in jewelry.
Officers were processing that crime scene–which they discovered after an alarm went off–when they were alerted to the robbery in progress at the gas station.
Police said Toukolehto was identified as the suspect in both crimes with assistance from the City of Bethlehem and Lower Saucon Township police departments, and was subsequently apprehended in the city “with the money and the metal bar as well as evidence from the burglary.”
“She did admit to both incidents,” police said.
They added that Toukolehto has also been charged with child endangerment, because she allegedly left her children–who are one and four–alone in their Hellertown apartment while she committed her alleged crime spree.
Police said Toukolehto is also being investigated as a suspect in the robbery of the Wawa on Broadway in Fountain Hill borough.
Toukolehto is also charged with robbery, burglary, criminal trespass, theft, receiving stolen property, terroristic threats, possessing instruments of crime and criminal mischief.
Police said Tuesday that she has also been charged with retail theft from an unnamed business on W. Water Street in Hellertown.
A preliminary hearing before District Judge Alan Mege in Lower Saucon Township is scheduled for Thursday, March 29 at 2 p.m.
