Man who sold deadly heroin dose gets prison term
MEDIA COURTHOUSE » A Darby Township man who pleaded guilty in June to selling a fatal dose of fentanyl-laced heroin to a 28-year-old Ridley Township man was sentenced to more than 19 years in state prison Friday.
James Kiree Collins, 26, received an aggregate total sentence of 231-462 months on charges of drug delivery resulting in death, involuntary manslaughter, criminal use of a communication facility, resisting arrest and three counts of delivery of a controlled substance.
Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge James Nilon indicated he was running each of the sentences consecutively to reflect that each sale of narcotics represented another possible death.
“You cannot pick up a newspaper in Philadelphia or Delaware County and not read about people dying of overdoses,” Nilon told Collins. “You can’t do it. It’s epidemic. Therefore I’m charging you, sir, that every time you went out to sell a drug, you went out with the knowledge that you were putting lives at risk. There’s no way for you to have ignored that because it’s in the paper every single day.”
Collins, of the 1200 block of Tribbett Avenue, was already in custody on drug delivery and related charges when he was charged with the fatal overdose of the Prospect Park man that took place in Secane on Oct. 2, 2016.
Ridley Township police responded to the Secane address about 5:39 a.m., according to an affidavit of probable cause for Collins’ arrest. The man was found on the floor of a bathroom and pronounced dead by a paramedic. Delaware County Medical Examiner Dr. Fredric N. Hellman ruled the cause of death as acute 3-methylfentanyl intoxication and the manner as an accident.
Investigators found a blue wax paper bag at the scene stamped with the word “BIG” and a picture of an apple in red ink.
Ridley Detective Sean Brydges developed Collins as a suspect from text messages in the victim’s cell phone and made contact with him on Oct. 3 for a buy. Collins sold Brydges six blue wax paper bags identical to the one found at the scene, according to the affidavit.
Pennsylvania State Police Forensic Services later confirmed the contents contained 3-methylfentanyl. Deputy District Attorney Sharon McKenna said Friday that the substance is 400 to 6,000 times more powerful than morphine.
Family members of the deceased man described him as a music lover who was full of life and love. A cousin said he was in a dark place and made a bad decision, but did not want to die when he decided to use heroin that night.
“That was the day my life as I know it ended,” said the victim’s mother. “A large hole in my heart formed … that will stay with me for life. I fill that hole with tears every day.”
Several of Collins’ family members said they had also experienced drug-related deaths in their own family and sympathized with the victim’s family. But they said they believed Collins was trying to feed his own children by selling heroin and did not intend to hurt anyone. His father said the street life and addiction had claimed him.
McKenna asked for a sentence of 20 to 40 years sentence Friday, the statutory maximum for delivery of a drug resulting in death. She said Collins made the conscious decision to cut his heroin with less-expensive but more powerful fentanyl to pad his profit margin, but likened that strategy to filling a revolver with bullets and playing Russian Roulette.
“It’s not ‘will it happen,’ it’s ‘when will it happen and how often?’” she said. “This isn’t about the defendant being addicted to drugs and this is what happened. This is about the defendant making conscious choices … to increase his income by selling poison to others. This is not an accidental event. This is a purposeful, calculated, clandestine business.”
Defense attorney Traci Burns said her client was also addicted to heroin and told her he was more clearheaded in the 10 months following his arrest than he had been in the last 10 years due to “forced sobriety.”
Burns sought a sentence of 90 to 180 months for the delivery charge, below the standard range, to reflect Collins taking responsibility for his actions and sparing the family the pain of a trial.
Collins also apologized to the victim’s family Friday and denied even knowing that the heroin contained fentanyl. He said he did not think his conscience would ever be clear.
“If I could bring (him) back I would do everything in my power to do so,” Collins said. “I didn’t intend to kill him. More than anything, I’m not a murderer or a monster. Believe me, if I had known he would have overdosed, I never would have sold him anything.”
But the judge said Collins had to have known he was putting lives at risk by selling a substance that is “almost presumably deadly.”
“If you shot him with a gun, you could not have engaged in more deadly conduct than you have engaged in,” said Nilon.
In addition to prison time, Collins was ordered to serve 12 years of probation and pay more than $6,000 in restitution to cover funeral costs for the victim. He is not eligible for early release.