Teacher charged with stealing laptops from CAPA Also accused in last week's bank robbery

A former science teacher at the city's Creative and Performing Arts high school who was charged last week in a bank heist was arraigned this morning on new charges after police said she admitted to stealing laptop computers from the high school.
Philicia Barbieri, 24, of Shadyside, was charged with theft of 10 to 15 laptops, which police said she admitted to taking between January and March. Police said she cried as school officials told her they had surveillance footage of her taking a laptop from a school classroom in March, police wrote in a criminal complaint.
A district judge this morning ordered her to have no contact with CAPA and set a preliminary hearing for April 26.
Ms. Barbieri, charged in a Friday robbery at a Fifth Third Bank on Penn Circle South, told police she stole the laptops, worth about $22,500, to support a heroin habit.
Police said she told them she and her boyfriend Alvin Carter, 28, also charged in the bank robbery, started doing the drug about six months ago. They robbed the bank because they were desperate to pay their rent, police said she told them.
Ms. Barbieri is a 2008 graduate of Chatham University, a spokesman said. A CAPA website said she taught chemistry as well as earth and space science.

                                                              Philicia Barbieri