Delivery death will bring sentence for Philly man

The two sides in the trial last week of a Philadelphia man accused of delivering a highly potent form of synthetic opioid to a Tredyffrin woman that ended up killing her, tragically ending her struggle with addiction, agreed on one thing: he sold drugs.

What the attorneys disagreed on was whether that man, Ricky Lowe, sold the drugs that 32-yearold Alanna Holt used the morning of her death. The defense said there was no conclusive evidence that he did; the prosecution said

it was readily apparent that he did.

“Who showed up?” when Tredyffrin police posed as the victim and sent a text to Lowe’s phone asking for more of the same drugs they believed he dropped off at her home less than a week before, the day she overdosed on three methyl fentanyl and died, asked Assistant District Attorney Vince Cocco in his closing argument on Friday. “The defendant.”

“You text that number and drugs and Ricky Lowe shows up,” Cocco told the jury, showing them a video captured by police of Lowe arrived at Holt home in the dark night on Nov. 8, 2018,

using his cell phone flashlight to open a mailbox where he would drop off the drugs the “fake” Holt asked for in exchange for cash. “This man will deliver drugs to your front door if you ask him to.”

Although defense attorney Joseph P. Green Jr. of West Chester, representing Lowe, argued that evidence surrounding the delivery in question, when police took Lowe into custody, did not prove that Lowe had given Holt drugs six days prior, the jury ultimately agreed with Cocco.

The panel of nine men and three woman deliberated about two hours before returning with a verdict of guilty on all charges against Lowe, 25 around 2:30 p.m. Friday. He was convicted of the first-degree felony charge of drug delivery

resulting in death, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, and criminal use of a communications facility. Common Pleas Judge Patrick Carmody revoked his bail following the verdict and ordered him held in Chester County Prison until his sentencing at a later date.

Holt was a 32-year-old Harcum College graduate who worked in veterinary health care at The Ryan Veterinary Hospital at The University of Pennsylvan, and other facilities. She was also a volunteer at The RADAR Project, an organization for the victims of child sexual and physical abuse founded by her mother, Leslie Holt, a former advocate at the Crime Victims’s center of Chester County in West Chester.

“We’re glad that the jury saw the truth, and convicted the defendant of his crimes,” said Cocco, a member of the D.A.’s Office Drug Unit, following the verdict. “The opioid epidemic affects people and families all over the country. In Chester County we will continue to aggressively prosecute the drug dealers who push these poisons into our communities.”

District Attorney Deb Ryan, who attended the trial during the week and was present for the verdict, echoed Cocco’s sentiments. “3-methyl fentanyl can be 7,000 times stronger than morphine and is the fatal drug that killed our victim. We will bring these cases to justice and do everything in our power to stop the drug trade in Chester County.”

Green did not offer comment on the verdict.

In July 2018, Chester

County Coroner Dr. Christina VandePol issued a warning about the increased presence of 3-methyl fentanyl in the drug overdose deaths her office had been investigating. Eventually, 112 residents would die that year from accidental overdoses, a number that decreased, slightly, in 2019 to 104.

“Heroin continues to be replaced or mixed with more potent drugs like fentanyl, overwhelming the tolerance level of many of those who suffer from opioid addiction,” said VandePol at the time. Many of the victims had succumbed to additives — super-potent opioids called “analogs” like 3-methyl fentanyl — to the heroin they believed they were ingesting.

About three months later, on Nov. 2, 2018, Tredyffrin police were called to the home Holt shared with her parents in the Malvern section of Tredyffrin between Swedesford Road and the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Her father, Timothy Holt, had found her slumped at the foot of her bed, unresponsive, about 7:15 a.m. Emergency personnel tried to revive her with Narcan, the anti-overdose inhalant. She never recovered.

Searching the bedroom, Tredyffrin Detective Robert Bostick found a baggie with a white powdered substance later determined to contain 3 methyl fentanyl. He also found Holt’s cell phone, and was able to track down the last message she had received that day from a person he believed was her drug supplier. It read, “It’s there.”

Holt, hiding her drug use from her parents, had been having suppliers leave drugs for her in the mailbox of the home, in exchange for other drugs, cash, or gift cards. Bostick decided to attempt to trick whoever the supplier was — “Jon 2 —Tindr Cute Big Dog” or “Fresh” — into bringing more drugs to the home. But in his texts as Holt, he was purposefully vague about what kind of drugs to bring or where to drop them, leaving it up to the supplier to bring the same substances to the same place as the fatal dose.

On the night of Nov. 8, Bostick put a pill bottle and counterfeit money in the mailbox and set up surveillance with other officers.

As police watched, a Jaguar approached the mailbox around 6:40 p.m. and stopped. A man wearing multi-colored clothes exited the car and walked to the mailbox. When the car left it was pulled over by patrol units. Searching the car, Bostick found the pill bottle and money he had left for “Jon.”

The driver was identified as Lowe.

Showing the jurors the surveillance video of Lowe driving to the mailbox with his lights off in the dark, Cocco argued that Lowe’s movements that night proved it was he who dropped off the fatal dose of drugs six nights before.

“It is almost as if he had been there before,” Cocco said. “It’s almost as if he had done this before. It’s almost as if he knew exactly what to do. Exactly the same as it was on Nov. 2. We didn’t go looking for Ricky Lowe. He came to us. He was caught red-handed.”

Green’s defense of Lowe centered around whether the cell phone that police found in Lowe’s car the night of his arrest, and which authorities contended he sued to set up the transaction with Holt, showed that he had not been in Malvern the morning of Nov. 2. Instead, data from cell phone towers indicated that he had been in North Philadelphia at 2:40 a.m. and 8:40 a.m., and not in Malvern at 4 a.m., when police believe the supplier dropped off the fatal drugs.

“That’s what the facts show,” Green argued. “Mr. Lowe was not in Chester County at that date and time.”

Green also contended that the amount of 3-methyl fentanyl found in Holt’s system at the time of her death was not enough to have proven fatal. It was the mixture of the drug with other substances in her bloodstream that led to her overdose, he said.

Lowe faces a possible maximum sentence for the charge of drug delivery resulting in death of 10 to 20 years, although sentencing guidelines will likely produce a much lower prison term.