A man from Smithtown was caught for selling fentanyl-laced pills to a teen from Garden City. He was released in Nassau County after pleading not guilty to charges related to the girl’s death by overdose in 2023, but prosecutors say he was sent to jail in Suffolk County for past drug crimes.
On Wednesday, Daquan Booker, 34, of Smithtown was held without bail in a Suffolk case where he is accused of selling pressed fentanyl pills to undercover police officers on July 11, 2023. This was said by Suffolk District Attorney Raymond Tierney.
On July 4, 2023, just one week before Booker was arrested in Suffolk, 17-year-old Grace Wrightington died in her Garden City home of a fentanyl overdose after taking pills she bought from Booker four days before. A prosecutor said that her parents found her dead in bed.
Tierney said that Booker was arrested by Garden City police on Friday while he was trying to visit a prisoner at Suffolk’s Riverhead Correctional Facility on charges connected to Wrightington’s death.
Booker pleaded not guilty in Nassau court on Tuesday to two counts of third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and two counts of third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance. These are felony drug charges. Donnelly said that he was let out of jail with electronic tracking and told to give up his passport. He was also given a curfew.
“He first talked to 17-year-old Grace Wrightington as she walked home from school,” Donnelly said. “He allegedly told her about pills he could sell her.” “Booker is said to have sold Grace fake oxycodone pills at least twice. Grace died four days after the last sale, on June 30, 2023.”
Donnelly also said that the high school senior overdosed 12 hours before she did it. She recorded herself on her phone, “clearly panicked and fearing she was taking fentanyl by accident,” she said.
The Nassau county prosecutor said, “She was tragically right.” “The pills Grace had with her were tested after she died and found to contain the drug that killed her.”
Tierney stated that in February, his office strongly resisted Booker’s participation in the Judicial Diversion Program, which is a state-created program for people whose crimes are linked to their own drug abuse or addiction….
When Booker, who used to live in West Babylon, was arrested for reportedly selling fentanyl to undercover police, he pleaded guilty to all four counts in the indictment.
Two counts of third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and two counts of third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance. In return, the court agreed to let him go through the diversion program.
Justice Philip Goglas of the Suffolk Supreme Court remanded Booker. He had earlier threatened to send Booker to prison for two years if he did not follow through with the treatment terms in his Judicial Diversion contract, Tierney said. Booker faces nine years in jail if he is found guilty of the charges in Nassau.
Donnelly has asked the State Legislature to pass Chelsea’s Law, a bill that would let officials charge drug dealers with manslaughter when they sold drugs to people who died of overdoses.
Booker’s next court date in Suffolk is set for November 1. He has to go back to court in Nassau on November 13.