Niles man charged with giving fatal dose of heroin

Staff report

WARREN

A 25-year-old Niles man is indicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter and corrupting another with drugs, accused of giving a fatal dose of heroin to a 25-year-old Mineral Ridge man who died May 31.

Mark Thornsberry of Wilson Avenue could get 25 years in prison if convicted on the four charges he now faces. He was indicted Wednesday by a Trumbull County grand jury, but has been locked up in the Trumbull County Jail since Oct. 13.

An investigation into the overdose death of Joshua J. Robbins, 25, indicated that Thornsberry provided heroin and injected it into Robbins the day he died.

It was possibly the first time Robbins had tried the drug, said Jeff Orr, commander of the Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force, which carried out the investigation with the help of the Weathersfield Police Department and a detective with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s office.

Robbins was found dead early May 31 in the mobile home where he was living on Dogwood Drive Southwest in the Westwood Lake Mobile Home Park.

A Weathersfield police report listed Robbins’ girlfriend and Thornsberry as individuals they spoke with regarding the death.

According to his obituary, Robbins was born locally but graduated from high school outside of the area. He worked for A To Z Plumbing of Niles.

Thornsberry has a lengthy criminal record in Niles Municipal Court.

A Youngstown man, James Patterson, received a 20-year prison sentence in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court last year after being convicted of supplying the heroin that killed a Girard girl on her 17th birthday in 2002.

The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s office also prosecuted cases recently in which the drug provider was held accountable for an overdose death. In one case the defendant got 10 years in prison, though some of the sentence was for other crimes.