Two sent to jail for fentanyl deaths of father, toddler
A federal judge has sent two people to prison for supplying the deadly dose of fentanyl that killed a father and his 13-month-old son in Santa Rosa in 2019.
Shane Cratty was sentenced to eight years in federal prison while his co-defendant, Lindsay Williams, received 7½ years in connection with the deaths of 29year-old Patrick O’Neill and his son, Liam.
Investigators said O’Neill bought one gram of fentanyl for $125 from the two convicted dealers and a third defendant, Leanna Zamora, on September 13, 2019.
In a court affidavit, Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Evan Ferguson detailed the father’s final hours after the purchase, taking some of the fentanyl with two companions in a garage, then arriving home to care for his child that night.
At about 10 p.m. he took a picture of Liam sleeping and sent it to the child’s mother, along with the message “Daddy did good I’m so proud of myself.”
She responded: “I’m so proud of you too!”
But the following day, the mother learned that O’Neill had not dropped Liam off with his sister, who had agreed to watch the toddler while his parents worked. When he didn’t respond to texts, she went to his house on the 200 block of Darek Drive, where she discovered her son lying unresponsive on the floor and frantically called 911, according to the criminal complaint.
At about 12:50 p.m., Santa Rosa police officers and paramedics arrived and found O’Neill lying on a bedroom floor, alive but in “extreme distress,” the court affidavit said, near the body of the toddler.
The boy’s mother desperately tried to revive him, but her efforts were unsuccessful. Feet away from the child and father, police “found two scraps of aluminum foil, a straw, a lighter, and a chunk of a white substance, among other things,” Ferguson wrote. Authorities said the foil tested positive for fentanyl and methamphetamine residue, and that Liam somehow “came in contact” with the substance.
An autopsy concluded he died of acute fentanyl intoxication.
Paramedics tried to revive O’Neill with naloxone and took him in an ambulance to a local hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest and died two days later.
Law enforcement alleged that Cratty, Williams and the third defendant, Zamora, were part of a larger criminal enterprise that caused drugs to proliferate in San Francisco, particularly in the Tenderloin district. Zamora’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for January 5.
Court filings submitted by Williams’ defense attorney described an abusive and traumatic upbringing, in which Williams’ mother often left her to care for her younger siblings. In one instance when Williams was 8 years old, Williams’ mother left her alone while she went on a trip to Hawaii. Williams and her siblings had to ask for food at a local baker and St. Vincent DePaul soup kitchen.
Such a “chaotic and traumatic” childhood eventually propelled Williams into addiction, the filing said.
Cratty was also a drug addict, trying to do a favor for his friend O’Neill when he supplied the drugs that killed him, according to court filings. In a letter to supplement his sentencing memorandum, Cratty’s parents, Rick Cratty and Jill Nussinow, said his behavior over the past decade “has been directed by his terrible choices due to his continued substance abuse patterns despite him trying to improve several times.”