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Man pleads guilty in overdose death
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A Warren man who pleaded guilty in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to supplying the drugs that led to the death of a woman is expected to receive five years in prison when he is sentenced.
Roderick Means, 33, of Southern Boulevard Northwest, entered his plea Thursday before Judge Lou D’Apolito to a charge of involuntary manslaughter for the April 11 overdose death of Melanie Anderson, 43, who died in Austintown.
A sentencing date has not been set.
The sentence was agreed on by Assistant Prosecutor Ken Cardinal and defense attorney Mark Hanni. Cardinal said Means was “reckless in his conduct,” which led to Anderson’s death.
Cardinal told the judge Means had sold Anderson the drug fentanyl, but Anderson thought she was buying heroin. She took the drug and died, Cardinal said.
Fentanyl is an opiate-based painkiller many times more powerful than heroin. Cardinal said the dose Anderson brought was 100 percent fentanyl. Sometimes some dealers or users will mix fentanyl with heroin, but Cardinal said in this case, that did not happen.
Three days after she died, investigators used Anderson’s cellphone to text Means and ask for a “reload,” or more drugs and set up a time and place to meet him.
Instead, it was members of the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force who met Means and took him into custody. The drugs he brought with him to that meeting were also pure fentanyl, Cardinal said.
Cardinal said Means told investigators he had no idea the drugs he was selling contained only fentanyl. Means blamed the mix-up on a family member.
Cardinal told the judge it is now time to hold dealers accountable for overdose deaths because there have been so many in recent years.
“We’re having drug dealers handing sticks of dynamite to these people, and the dynamite is lit,” Cardinal said.