Filing describes overdoses from heroin-fentanyl mix
Man charged with selling drugs that led to deaths of two users
On July 3, 2016, a Valatie man texted a friend and told her it could be the last time she might hear from him.
“I’m going to go get that stuff that almost killed me yesterday,” the 29-year-old wrote to the woman, who like him was a heroin user. The man, identified in court papers as “S.B.,” was referring to the near-fatal overdose he had suffered a day earlier outside the Columbia County home of his alleged dealer, 32-year-old Jacob Ebel.
“And I’m getting twice as much this time so this may be the last time u ever talk tome cuz I’m all alone this time w/no one to save me,” S.B. wrote. “And if these are my last words I just want to say I’m sorry for everything and I love you and goodbye. If I don’t ever see u again I hope maybe in another life we can be together.”
S.B. overdosed on fentanyllaced heroin, and died five days later at Albany Medical Center Hospital.
The narrative of the fatal overdose is contained in a pretrial brief filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Barnett that offers chilling details about the toll of the opioid epidemic and the black market that supports it.
Within three weeks, a 19-year-old Stuyvesant woman identified as “S.S.,” was found dead from an overdose of the same product. The prosecutors say that killer dose also was supplied by Ebel, who was soon arrested on state drug charges.
In February 2017, a federal grand jury in Albany indicted Ebel on drug charges that included conspiracy to sell and possess heroin and fentanyl, and selling drugs that resulted in a person’s serious bodily injury and death.
Ebel, who has a prior conviction for burglary, has been scheduled for trial before U.S. District Judge Mae D’agostino later this month. He’s scheduled to appear before the judge on Wednesday at 10 a.m. for a possible guilty plea. His attorneys had no comment on Tuesday.
Prosecutors have potentially damning evidence: images from the camera phone of S.B. outside the defendant’s house as well as Ebel’s text messages and statements to police and others in which he said he did not believe he should be held responsible for heroin that other people put into their bodies.
“Dude I’m getting blamed for there (sic) choices,” Ebel wrote on Facebook, according to the brief.
In another message, Ebel allegedly said, “Everybody just wants to blame me ... if you know anything about addiction these guys would’ve died no matter what you know what I mean.”
Ebel said people were blaming him as if he had murdered them himself or held a gun to their heads to make them shoot up, according to the brief. “Some people need to take responsibility,” he said in another Facebook message.
The brief described the sequence of events in both deaths.
On July 2, 2016, S.B. and the woman he later texted went to Ebel’s home. S.B. bought the heroin, and he and the woman injected the drugs in his car while parked in Ebel’s driveway. They passed out.
The woman awoke, found S.B. nonresponsive on her lap, got out and yelled for help to no avail. She performed mouth-tomouth resuscitation, which eventually revived him. She drove back to S.B.’S home; neither sought medical help.
The next day, S.B. messaged Ebel and begged him for more. Ebel mentioned he was fighting with his girlfriend, but obliged. Around 2 p.m., S.B. sent his friend the text about possibly not hearing from him again.
State Police found S.B’S body in his car less a mile from Ebel’s home. They found a syringe, arm strap and a Post-it note that said “4-0,” an allusion to the $40 S.B. had told Ebel he was holding. Powder on the note tested positive for heroin and fentanyl.
On July 23, S.S. was found dead in her home by her husband. Columbia County sheriff’s deputies found more Post-it notes in a bag, along with an oral injection device and a NARCAN kit, which is used to reverse overdoses.
The couple had only been married two months. The husband, also a heroin user, told police the couple had been fighting the night before over his drug use. He told police he “routinely and exclusively” bought heroin from Ebel, and that within the previous month he had seen Ebel cut the drug with fentanyl.
The husband told police that on July 21, he bought the very heroin that killed his wife at the home of Ebel’s girlfriend’s in Valatie. He said he gave money to Ebel, who was himself so intoxicated that he could not package the heroin. Another man at the house packaged it.
Ebel contacted the husband on Facebook the next day to make sure he got what he wanted. “That dude weighed it out for me,” the husband wrote to Ebel. “I was worried about you.”
Three days after the death of S.S., investigators seized heroin and fentanyl from Ebel’s home. He later made several admissions to the investigators, including that he sold between $30 and $50 worth of heroin to S.B. and $100 worth of the drug to the husband of S.S. He admitted that he folded heroin into Post-it notes.
The death of S.B. was “on me,” Ebel told them.
The husband told police his wife wanted him to stop using heroin and use Suboxone — and she had confiscated heroin from him the night before her death. She had mixed some of that heroin with another batch he had bought from Ebel a few days earlier.
The following month, the man who had packaged the heroin for S.S. and her husband was dead of an overdose.