Dealer pleads guilty in fatal OD
Bangor man faces 15 years in state prison for role in 2017 death of 20-year-old.
Paige Caiazzo was just 14 years old when she first went to rehab. Throughout her brief life, she was in and out of drug treatment, before she overdosed at 20 at her mother’s home in Bangor.
Caiazzo died on July 21, 2017, from the mixture of heroin and fentanyl she’d bought from a local drug dealer. And her mother,
Bonny Caiazzo, was left with the haunting words her daughter once told her.
“I truly understand when Paige said, ‘Life hurts too much to live’ because that’s me now,” the mother said in remarks read Friday in Northampton County Court as the man who sold the drugs pleaded guilty to killing her daughter, if inadvertently.
Matthew Mucklin, 36, of Bangor will serve six to 15 years in state prison for involuntary manslaughter and possession with intent to deliver heroin. At Judge Craig Dally’s urging, the shackled Mucklin turned to Caiazzo’s weeping family and apologized directly to them, saying that every day brings renewed regrets.
“I just feel terrible. I am deeply, deeply sorry for what I’ve done,” Mucklin said.
Mucklin is one of several people charged recently in the Lehigh Valley after fatal drug overdoses.
On the night of Paige Caiazzo’s death, her distraught mother called 911 after finding her body at their home on the 600 block of South Main Street. Authorities later recovered messages from Caiazzo’s and Mucklin’s cellphones that showed he supplied her the drugs the day before.
Amid the investigation, Bangor police suspected Mucklin was selling heroin from his North Third Street home, after complaints from concerned citizens and at least three nonfatal overdoses in the neighborhood, according to court records.
In February, authorities served a search warrant at the house where Mucklin lived with his wife and 5-year-old son, finding 150 bags of heroin, a scale and other drug paraphernalia, police said.
On Friday, Caiazzo’s mother cried in the courtroom, flanked by other family members. Assistant District Attorney Joseph Lupackino read her statement to Dally, in which she said her daughter’s death left her shattered and questioning even her faith in God.
Bonny Caiazzo said she had been hopeful her daughter was turning her life around. Paige Caiazzo enrolled in community college and was attending 12-step meetings, though she had her struggles, the mother said.
“If it was up to me Mr. Mucklin would be charged with two deaths,” Bonny Caiazzo said. “Hers and mine.”