A Raleigh man overdosed on his own drugs but kept selling them — with deadly consequences, officials say.
Now, Jayson McNeil is ordered to serve two concurrent life sentences in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina. McNeil also has to pay more than $20,000 in funeral costs for a man who died after allegedly getting opioids from him, the office wrote Wednesday in a news release.
The man, a 27-year-old husband and expectant dad, had been addicted to painkillers before his death in May 2018, according to the news release.
At the time, McNeil is accused of running a drug-dealing organization in Raleigh. Some people who used his products overdosed, including a former customer who had to be given Narcan to stay alive, prosecutors say.
“McNeil was fully aware of the deadly power of the substance he was distributing — indeed, he had his own personal wakeup call when he overdosed,” U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. said in the news release.
It happened after McNeil snorted fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine, according to prosecutors.
More than 67,000 people died after drug overdoses in 2018, according to data updated in March. Roughly 46,000 of those deaths involved opioids, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
McNeil was sentenced to life in prison after a jury in January found him guilty of “distribution of heroin and fentanyl resulting in death of a person, conspiracy to distribute and possession with the intent to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin,” The News & Observer reported. He received separate sentences for firearm and heroin possession, officials say.
His alleged co-conspirator, Destin McLean, pleaded “guilty to Conspiracy to Distribute one (1) kilogram gram of heroin,” the federal government says.
*story by Charlotte Observer