Teenage boy, 16, died of overdose after doing heroin in motel room with his own MOM

[Jabberwocky]

Fourth person charged after Akron teen found dead in Summit County hotel, sheriff says

Heather Frye, Benda Frye and Jessica Irons (Summit County Sheriff)

AKRON, Ohio — A fourth person has been charged after an Akron teen was found dead in a Summit County hotel room Wednesday.

First responders found 16-year-old Andrew Frye lying face down in a chair at a Super 8 hotel in Green in what Summit County Sheriff Steve Barry on Friday called a "senseless tragedy."

Donald Callaghan of Akron was arrested after investigators served a search warrant Friday morning at a home that Callaghan shared with Andrew's grandmother, Brenda Frye, Barry said.

Callaghan is charged with possession of heroin, according to the sheriff.

Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler found evidence of intravenous drug use and heroin in Andrew's blood, and preliminary tests showed possible signs of fentanyl. More tests will be done to confirm the fentanyl, Kohler said.

Andrew's mother, Heather Frye, and Brenda Frye, both are charged with involuntary manslaughter, tampering with evidence and other charges. They will be arraigned Friday afternoon in Barberton Municipal Court.

They face three to 11 years in prison if convicted.

"This is a horrible tragedy because of his age," said Margaret Scott, deputy chief assistant prosecutor. "If you give someone else your poison, then we are going to hold you criminally responsible."

Heather Frye's friend, Jessica Irons, is charged with tampering with evidence and possession of drugs.

U.S. Marshals arrested Heather Frye and Irons Friday morning in Stow.

Heather and Andrew Frye, and Irons went to Super 8 around 2 a.m. Wednesday because Andrew wanted to swim in the hotel's pool, the sheriff said.

Heather Frye dialed 911 at 6:45 p.m. after she awoke to find Andrew unresponsive. Deputies responded within minutes.

"The evidence in this case turns my stomach," Barry said. "When they arrived it was quite apparent that Andrew had been deceased for quite some time. There was nothing they could do."

Barry said family members, including Brenda Frye, had been in and out of the hotel room before deputies arrived.

Investigators found syringes, drug paraphernalia, and potential illicit drugs inside the room, according to the medical examiner's report.

Investigators said the three women tried to hide needles and drugs before deputies arrived.

Heather Frye never had custody of Andrew, and she wanted to be "the fun weekend mom," a detective said.

"We have evidence of drug abuse by more than one person, more than one relative, of the deceased," Barry said. "It appears his mother, her friend, and his grandmother, and a friend of the grandmother all had a hand in obtaining and disseminating heroin among themselves."

Brenda Frye's sister, Tammy Smith, was Andrew's legal guardian, a person close to the family told cleveland.com.


Source: http://www.cleveland.com/akron/index.ssf/2016/04/fourth_person_charged_after_ak.html

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

She wanted to be the ‘fun weekend mom.’ it’s the reason her teenage son died of heroi

While Andrew Frye lay dying on the floor of a Super 8 motel room in Green, Ohio, last week, a party raged around him.

The alleged attendees — themselves high from a mixture of heroin and fentanyl — weren’t other teenagers but the 16-year-old’s mother and grandmother, police say.

Prosecutors say the very people who should have protected the teenager from the dangers of drug use were the ones who walked him to a ledge and “enabled” him to jump.

“We have evidence of drug abuse by more than one person, more than one relative of the deceased,” Summit County Sheriff Steve Barry told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It appears his mother, her friend and his grandmother, and a friend of the grandmother, all had a hand in obtaining and disseminating heroin among themselves.

“The evidence in this case turns my stomach,” Barry said.

Facebook photo drew_1460052698410_1456375_ver1.0 Andrew Frye, a 16-year-old from Ohio, was found dead in a motel room Wednesday of a heroin overdose. His mother and grandmother have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. (Courtesy of NBC affiliate WKYC)
The teen’s mother, Heather Frye, and her mother, Brenda Frye, face multiple charges, including corrupting another with drugs, child endangering, tampering with evidence and involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony punishable by up to 11 years in prison, according to the Akron Beacon Journal.

Two other people in the room at the time — Heather’s friend Jessica Irons, 34, and Brenda’s friend Donald Callaghan, 58 — face lesser charges in connection with the teenager’s death, the paper reported.

Barry told reporters that it was “quite apparent” that the teenager was beyond help by the time rescuers arrived, according to Fox affiliate WJW-TV. The adults with him had attempted to hide needles and drugs in the room.

Citing court and prison records, the Beacon Journal reported that all four women have a history of drug-related crime and that the teenager’s mother spent time in prison on three occasions between 2007 and 2014.

During a news conference last week, Margaret Scott, deputy chief assistant prosecutor, told reporters that deaths like Andrew’s are increasingly common in the region.

The Plain Dealer reported that “during a 17-month stretch ending last May, nearly 1,000 people died from an overdose in Ohio.” Over a 17-day period last month, the paper noted, “at least 29 people died from overdoses in Cuyahoga County alone.”

“Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual,” Scott said. “It’s a horrible tragedy because of the age we see here, but it’s not unusual to see family members, unfortunately, procuring and giving the heroin and fentanyl to one another.

“If you’re going to give someone else your poison and you know it’s likely going to kill them,” he added, “we’re going to look at holding you criminally responsible.”

Heather Frye didn’t have custody of her son, according to the Plain Dealer. A detective assigned to the case told the paper that the 31-year-old wanted to be “the fun weekend mom.”

Andrew was adopted by Tammy Smith, a great-aunt and legal guardian, as an infant, according to the Beacon Journal. With the help of her late fiance, John Sabini, she raised Frye alongside her three children like he was one of their own, she told the paper.

When Sabini died in 2010, Smith said, Andrew was overcome by loss and began seeking the company of his biological mother, which worried family members. When his mother showed up a couple of times a year, family members told the Beacon Journal, she claimed that she was not using drugs and that she planned to clean up her life.

“He just wanted his mother and to be around [her] no matter how bad it was,” Julie Andrea, Tammy’s 33-year-old daughter, told the Beacon Journal. “He wanted her to stop. He thought that if he was with her when she was using, at least he was with her.”

Unfortunately, the opposite occurred, and the teenager developed his own history of drug abuse, the Plain Dealer reported. And yet, he was still a teenager, family members told the paper, one who “liked animals, building computers, playing with his cousin’s children and singing.”

“Never in a million years did we think she would get him into heroin,” Andrea told the paper. “We think the only reason he did it was to get her approval.”

On Tuesday night, the last full one that Andrew would spend alive, his biological mother showed up at Smith’s door to take the teenager on an outing. The plan was for the pair to go shopping and then go swimming at a local motel, according to NBC affiliate WKYC.

“He told me he loved me and he would come back,” Smith told the Beacon Journal.

At some point the next day, his mother, his grandmother and their friends gathered in the motel room and decided to shoot up with the teenager. Detectives told the Beacon Journal that Heather Frye told her son to shoot up in a bathroom so she wouldn’t have to watch him do it — the act bothered her.

In a recording of a 6:45 p.m. phone call to 911, a sobbing and hysterical Heather Frye can be heard telling a dispatcher that she awoke to find her child dead, according to the Beacon Journal.

“He’s not breathing,” the paper quotes her as saying. “I woke up and my son is so cold.”

After telling the dispatcher that she suspected her son was dead of a drug overdose, she asked another sobering question:

“Can I pick him up and hold him, please? … I want to hold him,” she said. “I just want my baby back.”

Smith, the teenager’s adopted mother, told the Beacon Journal that she longs for the same thing. She was folding clothes when she learned that her son was dead. There is a hole in their family now, she said, and if she could, she’d give up her life to “truly trade places with him.”

Full article link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...e-say-its-the-reason-her-teenage-son-is-dead/

 

[.:Holy::Toast:.]

Nothing is more fun than shooting smack with your mom and her friends at a motel party

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Detectives told the Beacon Journal that Heather Frye told her son to shoot up in a bathroom so she wouldn’t have to watch him do it

Damn that's some depressing shit

Not that unusual, though...I've known more than a few people who come from "addict families", introduced to narcotics by their own family members

 

[RedLeader]

...Inevitably mainstream discussion of this story will devolve into debates over the death penalty, the purpose of compassion, the upcoming election, and so on. Nobody will make any attempt to discuss practical plans to, you know, get all of the god damn candid fentanyl out of the heroin trade to lessen the amount of ODs.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

i think noonoo posted this already

 

[manboychef]

...Inevitably mainstream discussion of this story will devolve into debates over the death penalty, the purpose of compassion, the upcoming election, and so on. Nobody will make any attempt to discuss practical plans to, you know, get all of the god damn candid fentanyl out of the heroin trade to lessen the amount of ODs.

I think that since fentanyl has become so big in the states, there will be addicts actually seeking out that huge hit for less money. I think the real problem is misrepresentation. Tell people what they are getting. The only way to do this is to legalize and have chemists synthesize your doses of heroin, or fentanyl. The method now actually makes it worthwhile for criminals to mix the two, or just represent fentayl as heroin. Incarceration for murder when an addict ODs on your product has not stemmed the flow of illicit fentanyl so I believe policy makers should be looking at making narcan free, and destigmatizing opiate addiction.

 

[xivixive]

i know several people who honestly believe all the fent-dope going around is a government plot to kill a ton of middle-class white men so there will be less resistance to a take over.

personally EVERYTIME i cop dope now its fucking fent-dope. and it sucks. i don't like the sedation of fentanyl, i like the energetic euphoria of heroin. havent seen straight up oldschool ECP in a year now. fent-dope gave me my first OD in 15 years of use - after sniffing a 2nd bag 30mins after the first! unbelievable and fuckin ridiculous.

 

[slimvictor]

"This is a horrible tragedy because of his age," said Margaret Scott, deputy chief assistant prosecutor. "If you give someone else your poison, then we are going to hold you criminally responsible."

I have mixed feelings about this quote.

The tragedy is especially horrible because of his age, yes.
What really disgusts me is that his mother allowed him to use (heavy) drugs at age 16.
Children should not be using recreational drugs. Period.

But, is heroin a "poison"? Maybe. But less so than alcohol.
So, if an adult gives an adult heroin, and everyone is free to make their own choices about taking the drug, there should be no crime at all.
Otherwise, we get pretty Orwellian, punishing people for giving drugs to people who chose to use them.

But, in this case, giving it to a child was a fucked-up choice.

 

[manboychef]

I have mixed feelings about this quote.

The tragedy is especially horrible because of his age, yes.
What really disgusts me is that his mother allowed him to use (heavy) drugs at age 16.
Children should not be using recreational drugs. Period.

But, is heroin a "poison"? Maybe. But less so than alcohol.
So, if an adult gives an adult heroin, and everyone is free to make their own choices about taking the drug, there should be no crime at all.
Otherwise, we get pretty Orwellian, punishing people for giving drugs to people who chose to use them.

But, in this case, giving it to a child was a fucked-up choice.

This is so spot on. I look at using drugs at the right age as akin to the age of consent for sex. Once you reach a certain age and have been informed, are not already so messed up that you cannot consent, then it should be your choice. That is exactly why narcan must be free. In florida it is pretty expensive, so if you are a junkie, chances are you will be spending the money you would on narcan on getting a couple extra bags.

What caused me to take pause in this article was that the parent was trying to be his friend. This is not how it should be. You should be a parent first and a friend second...but actually being a good friend is to steer your friend away from such self destructive behaviors. I have a feeling that the child's mother had a similar situation with her mother, so she may never have learned the distinction necessary to separate those two facets of being a parent in a healthy way. Above all else a parent is supposed to act in their child's best interest until they are old enough to do so on their own. In this situation the parent made the use of heroin very accessible and more than likely glamorized it to him. My father was an addict while I was growing up. He never used around me, however, it was very apparent when he was high. I eventually found his needles and started using myself at the age of fifteen. He did try so many times to get me to stop. It was a do as I do and not as I say situation, but if he had been open and honest with me about how bad addiction and dependence can get, I more than likely would have tried my hardest to steer clear.

My heart breaks for this child. My heart also breaks for this family. They are a bunch of addicts that more than likely were just taking part in the cycle of neglect that they were involved in as children considering the grandma was also there. For me the really sick part was that he was dead for some time and they kept on using around him before calling rescue workers. Yes he may have been dead when they woke up, but that is no reason to keep using. That should have been a sobering turning point in what they were doing, and possibly the moment to reexamine their life circumstances that brought them to that point. IME my dad would never have used with me, even after he realized I was a pretty bad junky. I thank him for that, but I wish he would have let me in on how horrible his life was constantly sneaking around, and being sick when the odd bill would come up and he would be out of money. Instead after I got kicked out of school he just told me about smoking pot, and when I pointedly asked him about the needles he lied about it. He could have saved me fifteen years of heartache.