Man gets 15+ years in prison for selling fatal heroin dose
A Rome man was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Steve C. Jones after pleading guilty to selling a fatal dose of heroin to a woman in July 2018.
Shane Ladell Terhune, 41, pleaded guilty in July to the charges and at that point admitted that the sale resulted in the overdose death of a 25-year-old woman.
“The life of a young lady abruptly ended when Shane Terhune sold her a deadly dose of heroin,” Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Atlanta Field Division Robert J. Murphy said in a statement.
Terhune, who has a history of drug offenses, was arrested after Floyd County police responded to an overdose call. The investigation found that, earlier that afternoon, Terhune met the woman and her fiancé on Oleary Lane near U.S. 411 and gave them a plastic bag containing heroin. She then injected the heroin and died of an overdose.
In a related opioid drug overdose case, 38-year-old Cornelius Brown was sentenced in August to five years in prison after pleading guilty to selling $150 worth of heroin.
As part of his plea, Brown also admitted that the sale of fentanyl in June 2018 resulted in the overdose death of a man in the bathroom of a Circle K after he injected the substance.
“Terhune and Brown both profited by trafficking in deadly opioids that tragically ended two lives,” Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Kurt R. Erskine said in a statement.
“These dangerous narcotics are killing and catastrophically injuring users at unprecedented rates,” Erskine continued. “This case and other recent cases demonstrate that opioid overdoses will be investigated and prosecuted as a federal priority and those who sell this poison will be held accountable for the death and suffering that it causes.”
Brown was sentenced to five years in prison to be followed by 10 years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to the charge of distributing heroin in January. These cases were investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the DEA Rome, Georgia Post of Duty, Atlanta-Carolinas High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force, with assistance by the RomeFloyd Metro Task Force, the Rome Police Department, the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office, the Floyd County Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.