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Zanesville Times Recorder
Where's justice in
overdose fatalities?
Jona Ison, Reporter
CHILLICOTHE - Billy Guysinger can't bring himself to come home from
working third shift at the paper mill at the same time anymore. Not
since the December morning his two cats failed to meet him at the door.
The morning he peeked into his adult son's room to find what he often
feared he'd find.
"The only thing I could say was, 'Why, son,?’" Billy said.
Chase Guysinger, a 28-year-old father of one, looked like he'd simply
gone to sleep, likely not long after Billy had left for work the night
before. A toxicology report revealed he had cocaine and fentanyl in his
system. Just a few granules of fentanyl, a synthetic opiate that is
upwards of 100 times more potent than heroin, is enough to cause an
overdose within moments of ingestion.
Billy is convinced his son had no idea he was taking fentanyl, and he's
pushing local officials — from the police department to the
prosecutor's office — to do something they've yet to do — file
manslaughter charges against the person who sold the drugs to his son.
"Why aren't we charging these people if you know where stuff is coming
from? A lot of times they don't know, but if you have the information
right in front of you, it's not rocket science. Families want to see
something done about it,” Billy said.
Billy Guysinger shares why he thinks his son died of an overdose in his
Chillicothe home.
Suspicion vs. evidence
Between 2003 and 2015, there have been 274 deaths from drug overdoses
in Ross County and none of them have resulted in involuntary
manslaughter charges. A handful of cases have been taken by the
Chillicothe Police and the Ross County Sheriff's Office to County
Prosecutor Matt Schmidt to consider for charges, but he’s declined to
pursue a case thus far.
“I get a lot of calls from friends and family members, and we hear a
lot of rumors about who did it and we know who did it, but actual proof
is a lot more difficult to come by, particularly when it’s a person who
is a constant user, to prove the drugs that killed them came from one
source is very difficult because they often go through so many
(dealers) over the course of a very short period of time,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt is looking into possibly partnering with federal authorities to
pursue a different way to charge someone in an overdose fatality. Under
federal law, a specification can be added onto a drug trafficking
charge that the drug trafficked resulted in the death of another. The
specification carries up to 15 more years in prison, which is four more
years than Ohio's maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter.
However, the case would still need the same type of evidence, Schmidt
said.
No excuses
Billy doesn’t hide in denial. He knows his son had been battling
addiction for several years, having apparently gotten hooked on pain
pills prescribed after a football injury. He’d been well-liked,
evidenced by the scores of people who funneled through his visitation –
high school friends, teachers, coaches, and even the lunch lady,
Guysinger said.
“He was a great kid. He was focused on what he was supposed to be
doing, but that stuff had a hold on him,” Billy said.
Chase had been a functional addict.
“He went to work, he did everything he was supposed to be doing, and
hiding it,” Billy said. “If you’re not on top of them all the time, you
don’t really notice that stuff, I guess. Well, I didn’t.”
Eventually, they began to pick up on small signs, and Chase admitted he
had a problem. He went to a Suboxone clinic in Circleville about four
years ago, but he relapsed. Then he took a Vivitrol shot, which blocks
the brain from getting high from opiates, and moved to Michigan with
his mother.
“He always said no (I’m not using), but I’m not stupid. I know what he
looked like when he was doing things, and some days he looked like
that, but he just said he was tired,” Billy said. “Until they are going
to say flat out, yea, I’m using again, what can you do? There ain’t
nothing you can do.”
Chase would come back to Chillicothe to see his son and moved in with
Billy just a few weeks before he died. The move was to comply with
orders to maintain visitation with his 4-year-old son Connor, Billy
said.
At 10:15 p.m. Nov. 30, Billy talked with Chase before leaving for work
and remembers Chase saying he’d see him in the morning because he had
to get out and find a job. His girlfriend in Michigan last heard from
him at 10:38 p.m., leaving Billy to suspect he died soon after. Billy
found him in bed at about 7 a.m. Dec. 1.
“I just tell people God prepared me for that day for over a year
because I repeatedly told my mom, 'Mom, I’m going to find him dead if
he don’t do something or somebody’s going to find him.' I didn’t
realize he was preparing me to be the one to find him,” Billy said.
Police began investigating right away, he said, but he’s worried it
won’t be enough to convince Schmidt to pursue charges.
“I don’t think I’m going to get the results I want out of the
information the prosecuting attorney has … It’s not over with yet, but
as of right now, I’m not pleased,” Billy said.
Planets aligned
Talk to any investigator, officer, or prosecutor, and they’ll all tell
you investigations can often take longer than anyone would like,
particularly those directly impacted. In March, the Pickaway County
Prosecutor’s Office had a fatal drug overdose case end with a guilty
plea to involuntary manslaughter, but it was a case that began with the
death of Jessica Lillie 16 months before on Dec. 16, 2015.
Lillie had heroin along with her prescribed oxycodone in her system
when she died.
Although the case ended up as a win for Prosecutor Judy Wolford’s
office, Wolford said it was a unique situation. Lillie was one of 10
Pickaway County residents who died of a drug overdose in 2015 and one
of 63 between 2010 and 2015, yet her death was the only one of those
that led to an involuntary manslaughter charge.
“This was a case where I hate to say the planets aligned, but the
planets aligned. Everything just kind of fell into place … I don’t know
that we’ll ever have one that’s like this again,” Wolford said.
Like Chase Guysinger, Lillie was a functional addict – she had a
college degree and was a supervisor at FedEx – and her addiction began
after she was seriously injured in a car crash in September 2014. She
died in her father’s home, her bedroom door blocked with a cane and her
7-year-old son asleep in the bed.
Right away, investigators had something often lacking in fatal overdose
investigations – an untampered scene and an accommodating, credible
witness. Her father had noticed Lillie sneak outside the night before
when she turned off the porch light, which was matched with text
messages between her and Dwayne Dawson who lived down the road with her
grandfather.
“Part of the deal seemed, he didn’t work, so she would buy the heroin
and give him a little extra money so he could get his own as well,”
Wolford said.
Investigators also found Dawson’s DNA on the heroin packaging from
Lillie’s room, Wolford said.
Even in a seemingly strong case, it took about seven months before it
was presented to a grand jury and Dawson was indicted. The kicker in
the case came while Dawson awaited trial.
According to Wolford, he confided to someone in jail he’d been on the
phone with Lillie when she was shooting up the night she died and had
warned her to be careful because it was the same heroin she’d overdosed
on the week before.
The guy took notes on the conversations not because he wanted a deal,
Wolford said, but because he had a relative who had overdosed and was
“freaked out” by Dawson’s admission. Phone records corroborated his
story, Wolford said.
They also had a statement from the man who dealt Dawson the drugs,
Steve Stanton II, who was granted intervention instead of a conviction
on a fifth-degree felony trafficking heroin charge.
On the morning of Dawson’s December trial, he agreed to a plea
agreement with Assistant Prosecutor Heather Armstrong recommending a
three-year sentence. Pickaway County Common Pleas Judge Randall Knece
rejected the recommendation in March and sentenced the 49-year-old
Dawson to the maximum 11 years.
“When the words ‘I wasn’t her supplier’ and ‘she put it in herself’
came out of his mouth, it wasn’t going well,” Armstrong said of the
sentencing.
At sentencing, Knece mentioned the fentanyl-involved overdoses in Ross
County and how “it’s killing them like flies,” according to a
Circleville Herald story.
“You bring this poison around and spread it around, and you got caught.
So you’re going to pay the price and let the message go out that if you
do this stuff in Pickaway County and you get caught, you’re going to
prison,” Knece said.
Justice denied?
Guysinger spoke out during a March town hall, asking officials why they
aren’t filing charges, pointing to the Lillie case in Pickaway County
and a January case in Pike County where a man was charged for his
wife’s fatal overdose.
Although charges were filed against 51-year-old Peter S. Kidnocker, the
case may be on the verge of being dismissed because it hasn’t been
presented to a grand jury for indictment. Pike County Prosecutor Rob
Junk was required to show cause by April 21 why it shouldn’t be
dismissed due to lack of prosecution.
Depending on how a judge rules on a dismissal, charges could be brought
in the case again.
According to Junk, the charges filed by the Pike County Sheriff’s
Office were done a bit preemptively because he can’t present the case
for indictment without autopsy and toxicology results proving her cause
of death, which can take months.
“When you don’t have those, and you arrest someone, you can’t hold them
in jail forever because you run out of speedy trial time,” Junk said.
“Unfortunately, when you arrest people (without the necessary results)
all you are really doing is inconveniencing people for a few days.”
If a similar situation happened in Ross County, Schmidt likely would’ve
dropped the case already.
“They’re not going to force a case on me,” Schmidt said, saying he
doesn't think the sheriff or police chief would try to do so. “If they
charge somebody with involuntary manslaughter without the appropriate
evidence to do it, I’ll dismiss the case. It’s that simple. I’m not
going to push ahead a case if we don’t have evidence to prove it.”
Either way, Schmidt is unsure what kind of impact such cases would have
on the big picture: stemming the flow of opiates and subsequently the
overdoses.
“It’s not going to deter it. The benefit to higher level trafficking
charges or potentially an involuntary manslaughter charge if we can
make that, the lone benefit is to remove one bad apple from the
community, one person who is dealing,” Schmidt said. “But the truth of
the matter is, even as we take off these lower level dealers and even
mid-level and higher dealers, it only gives a reprieve to an ongoing
problem. It’s not going to, even if I could bring ten involuntary
manslaughter cases this year, it’s not going to stop the problem or
stem the flow of heroin into our community.”
Read this article with photos, plus others, at the Zanesville Times Recorder
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