Police blotter
The following items are based on information from police, unless otherwise noted:
EAST WINDSOR
Major Drug Bust: Ronald Boyler, 39, of East Windsor, was arrested Wednesday on drug charges after authorities raided his Forest Drive residence and discovered $50,000 worth of marijuana products. The Mercer County Narcotics Task Force concluded its month-long investigation by executing the search warrant and nabbing Boyler in the operation. Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo J. Onofri announced the arrest on Friday, saying a search of Boyler’s home revealed approximately 10 pounds of high-grade marijuana valued at approximately $40,000, one box of edible marijuana chocolate bars valued at approximately
$1,000 and approximately 90 grams of pure THC oil, used in vape pens, valued at approximately $9,000. Boyler was arrested without incident and charged with second-degree possession of a controlled dangerous substance and seconddegree possession with the intent to distribute. He was released pending future court proceedings. The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office executed the search warrant Wednesday with assistance from the East Windsor, Hamilton, Princeton and Trenton police departments all operating under the command of Onofri’s Special Investigations Unit.
BUCKS COUNTY, Pa.
Drug Dealer Punished: Robert Sykes, 26, of Trevose, Pennsylvania, was sentenced in Bucks County Common Pleas Court Friday after pleading guilty to charges of possession with intent to deliver fentanyl, delivery of fentanyl, involuntary manslaughter, recklessly endangering another person and illegal use of a communication facility. Sykes, a self-confessed heroin dealer who let a friend die of a drug overdose in a Bensalem hotel room without calling 911, was sentenced Friday to serve six to 15 years in state prison, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office. Sykes was arrested Dec. 4, 2016, shortly after his friend, Matthew Dunn of Philadelphia, was found dead of an overdose inside a room Sykes had rented at the Knights Inn off Old Lincoln Highway. Sykes had booked the room as a place to celebrate Dunn’s 27th birthday. Instead, Dunn overdosed and died after snorting fentanyl that Sykes had given him. Sykes and a third man who was in the room tried unsuccessfully to revive Dunn with CPR, but they never called for help before leaving the hotel around 1 p.m. Police arrested Sykes about a half-mile away, with 81 packets of fentanyl still stuffed inside his pants. “You were in a hotel room with two of your friends, and you let one of them die. It’s really that simple,” Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. told Sykes at Friday’s sentencing hearing, according to the D.A.’s office. “You left an ill, overdosing, dying young man alone in a hotel room, when all you had to do was call 911.” Deputy District Attorney Thomas C. Gannon told Bateman that Sykes had used his phone to record his clumsy, ill-fated efforts to revive Dunn, apparently to show his friend afterward. Coughing, slapping and vomiting sounds could be heard on the recording, Gannon said, and at one point Sykes is heard saying, “Dunn [expletive] dog. It two days from your [expletive] birthday and this what I do for you. You’re about to die … ” The recordings were made more than five hours before Sykes left the room, the investigation found, according to a news release issued Friday by the District Attorney’s Office. Sykes told investigators that he gave Dunn one or two packets of drugs for free “because it was his birthday.” He did so, Gannon said, despite knowing that Dunn was not a regular heroin user, that the batch of drugs had already caused another user to overdose, and that it contained fentanyl because of its light color. “I gave him the dope. I left him there. It was all my fault,” Sykes told police, according to Gannon. Sykes was not charged with the more serious crime of drug delivery resulting in death because an autopsy showed that Dunn had multiple drugs, including toxic levels of cocaine, in his system when he died. “He was my best friend,” Sykes told Bateman, eliciting sarcastic laughs from members of Dunn’s family. “I want to apologize and say how sorry I am. I never meant for any of this to happen. We had planned for weeks to meet up for his birthday and things just got out of hand,” Sykes said. Bateman said Sykes not only helped cause his friend’s death, but also endangered the community by selling heroin and fentanyl. “You are a drug dealer, plain and simple,” he said.