Dealer sentenced to 10 years for opioid overdoses

The drug dealer responsible for supplying the fentanyl that killed a Bexley man and caused a near-fatal overdose of the man’s girlfriend was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison.

Shawn W. Point, 31, pleaded guilty last month to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Sean D. Herman, 26, and corrupting another with drugs in the overdose of Lynsey Vogelpohl, 29.

The sentence, imposed by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jenifer French, will run consecutive to a 4-year sentence that Point received in July in Fairfield County for causing the drug-overdose death of a friend in Baltimore.

The Fairfield County death occurred on Sept. 13, 2015. It was followed a week later by Herman’s death on Sept. 21, 2015, and Vogelpohl’s overdose on Sept. 22, 2015.

Point, of Murnan Road in Prairie Township, admitted during a presentencing interview that he knew drugs he sold contained fentanyl and told users only to take a quarter-dose, Assistant Prosecutor Jamie Sacksteder said.

A day after Herman died at a home on East Broad Street from the combined effects of fentanyl and morphine, Point supplied Vogelpohl with a drug that nearly killed her in the same home, Sacksteder said.

She encouraged the judge to impose a sentence that would get the attention of other central Ohio drug dealers.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is up to 100 times more potent than morphine and has been linked to numerous fatal overdoses.