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Parents of OD victim, man who gave her drug console each other after hearing
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The families of Maurice Bryant and Megan Fitzgerald walked from the courtoom Thursday and immediately hugged each other and cried – for the Bryant family’s son was headed to prison for three years, and the Fitzgerald family’s daughter had died from drugs Bryant gave her.
Bryant, 28, had been a friend of Megan’s, and they had done drugs together, Megan’s father, David Fitzgerald, said outside the Trumbull County Common Pleas courtroom of Judge Ronald Rice. Fitzgerald, 24, died April 10, 2015.
“They were all friends. I know it took a lot for him to take responsibility, but he stood up and did it,” David Fitzgerald said of Bryant, of Shady Lane in Howland.
The Fitzgerald family gave a statement to the court saying they knew their daughter was a drug addict, and she had started using drugs again a few months before her death. They thanked Bryant for taking responsibility for his role in her death.
Bryant pleaded guilty earlier to involuntary manslaughter, corrupting another with drugs and two drug-trafficking offenses. Drug-dealing charges against another man, Rafael L. Patterson, 26, also have spun off the investigation into Megan’s death.
Atty. David Engler told Judge Rice the “shocking” thing he’s learned from Bryant and other addicts is that they use heroin laced with fentanyl – what killed Fitzgerald – because they want to “fall out,” meaning “to get to the point of overdosing.”
“Because when the addiction becomes stronger and stronger, the need to get a more and more potent drug gets greater,” Engler said.
David Fitzgerald said the reason addicts take such a chance with their lives is “to take them to that first high that they will never get back to.”
While standing in front of Judge Rice, Bryant apologized to the Fitzgerald family, said he takes responsibility for what happened and said he hopes someday to counsel others to prevent them from making the same mistakes.
“When you are out there using, you don’t tend to think about something bad happening,” he said. He had been using heroin three years and started because friends were using it, he said when quizzed by Judge Rice.
The judge ordered Bryant to pay the $7,658 cost of Megan’s funeral and said Bryant will be on probation five years after he leaves prison.
Megan’s mother and Linda Spies, a local drug-addiction activist, spent a long time in the hallway after the hearing hugging numerous members of the Bryant family as they consoled each other for their loss.
“We’re not mad at each other. I just feel she has a loss in this situation and that she has forgiven my son for the part he had in this situation,” said Bryant’s mother, who was part of the group. She declined to give her name.
The Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force announced the charges against Bryant as one of the first times local law enforcement had successfully traced back the source of drugs given to someone who died of a drug overdose.