SANTA FE, N.M. — A former Georgetown County sheriff’s lieutenant is being sought in the armed robbery of one Santa Fe pharmacy this week and the attempted robbery of another, after police say his wife, a Santa Fe prosecutor, recognized him on surveillance video showed on a TV news broadcast and called authorities.

The former deputy, George William Smith, 43, who left the Georgetown County Sheriff’s office in 2009, is accused of using a gun and demanding the potent narcotic Oxycodone at both pharmacies, police said. He left the first store Monday when the pharmacist wouldn’t give him any pills. But he made off with hundreds of tablets from another pharmacy the next day, authorities said.

Assistant District Attorney Dorie Biagianti-Smith called authorities and confronted her husband after recognizing him on a television news broadcast that aired surveillance video of the Monday robbery, District Attorney Angela “Spence” Pacheco said.

Smith fled the couple’s home Thursday night, according to a report by The Santa Fe New Mexican.

“This goes against everything she stands for,” Angela Pacheco said of her colleague.

“She is devastated, very upset and distraught,” Pacheco told the Albuquerque Journal. “But she had the courage to do what she needed to do.”

Smith worked for the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office for 15 years until he quit , sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Cuthbertson said Friday.

He briefly worked for the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office in New Mexico in early 2011 before Sheriff Tommy Rodella asked him to resign, department spokesman Jake Arnold said.

“The sheriff told him he didn’t think he was a good fit,” Arnold told the Journal. He said he couldn’t elaborate because Smith’s departure was a personnel matter.

In Monday’s robbery attempt, a man police identified as Smith pointed a gun at a pharmacist and demanded Oxycodone. He ran out of the store when the pharmacist refused to give him the pills. On Tuesday, Smith went into a pharmacy in suburban Santa Fe and again pointed a gun at the clerk, authorities said. The clerk pointed in the direction of the pills and ran away. Authorities allege Smith then made off with about 500 pills.