During a sleepover, Marie Prine, 15, and a 14-year-old friend climbed out a window at the friend’s house to meet a man they met over Snapchat.
After buying two fake oxycodone pills from him, the girls returned to the house, rolled up dollar bills and snorted powder from the pills they crushed.
Then they crashed on the 14-year-old’s twin bed.
In the early morning hours of July 21, 2021, the 14-year-old friend woke up.
Prine never did.
“She was in between the worlds of being a kid and being an adult -- that kind of awkward age where there’s a lot to figure out and so much change going on,” said her mother, Iyla Evans.
“But it just stopped for her. She will never get to grow up. We will never get to see how she would use her gifts in this world.’’
Prine’s parents attended the sentencing Tuesday of the man who supplied the fentanyl to the street-level dealer who provided the pills that ended up killing their daughter. They were joined by family friends and several of their daughter’s classmates at Yamhill Carlton High School.
Earlier in the day, one floor down in the same federal courthouse, another set of parents, grandparents and friends remembered 17-year-old Cedar McMichael, a senior at Portland’s Helensview School when he also died from an accidental fentanyl overdose.
The cases reflect Oregon’s place in the nation’s fentanyl crisis -- adolescent drug overdose deaths have more than doubled across the country since 2019 but more than tripled in Oregon over the same time.
The overdoses are tied to the cheap and easy access to fentanyl flooding Oregon’s streets, according to narcotics investigators and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The synthetic opioid is usually concealed in fake prescription medication. Users often believe they’re buying pills made with much less potent oxycodone.
Jessiah Supanich described finding his 17-year-old son dead in bed on the morning of Dec. 30, 2020. He had fentanyl and ecstasy in his system.
“It is not possible for me to see anything worse,” the father said. “His face when I found him is burned indelibly into my mind. It appears to me at random. Dark, terrible, energy flows from that moment into my life forever. It changes the way the world looks to me.”
The investigations also reveal the web of addiction that often ensnares lower-level sellers. In both Prine’s and McMichael’s deaths, suppliers were hooked on opioids themselves and sold counterfeit M30s with fentanyl to make money to maintain their own cache, their lawyers said.
“We would often like in a situation like this, for this to be a simple story of a beautiful young woman whose life was taken by an evil and terrible man,” U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman said at the sentencing of the man who supplied the pills that killed Prine.
“And it’s almost never the story that it actually turns out to be.’’
Iyla Evans shows a photo of her daughter Marie Prine that she keeps in her cell phone. Her daughter liked to draw, paint, make collages and write creative stories, her mother said.Courtesy of Iyla Evans
SENSITIVE SOUL
Prine turned 15 about three months before her death.
She still slept every night with her baby blanket, her mother said. She was studying to get her driver’s permit.
The youngest of three children, she was a “sensitive soul” who loved animals, her mother said. When she was younger, she’d walk the neighborhood with her mom to save earthworms from drowning in rain puddles.
Her best friend was her cat Amani. She loved to draw, paint, make collages of photos and write creative stories.
At 6:43 a.m. on July 21, 2021, a 911 call to Yamhill County dispatch reported Prine had been found with no pulse in her friend’s home in Dayton. Paramedics and sheriff’s deputies arrived but couldn’t revive her.
Detectives found Prine had snorted the equivalent of one full pill and a quarter of another while her friend had snorted slightly less, prosecutors said. Both pills had “M” on one side and a “30″ on the other.
A search of Prine’s cellphone led to the man who sold the pills to the girls for $30 apiece and went by the name “plugged8x” on Snapchat, then to the man, Scott Keeling, who supplied the street-level dealer.
Keeling, 23, went by the name “firstdopeboy” on Snapchat. Detectives arranged to buy pills from Keeling on July 22, 2021. They met him in a parking lot of an Albertson’s in Yamhill County. Keeling drove up with a child in his car and was arrested with 48 pills, according to prosecutors.
Keeling pleaded guilty to possessing fentanyl with the intent to distribute.
He suffered from an opiate addiction himself and told investigators that he had been “declared clinically deceased three times after consuming” M30 fentanyl pills, according to a federal affidavit. He had spent about a month and a half hospitalized in April 2021 for a fentanyl overdose.
His lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender Ryan Costello, called the case one of the most difficult he’s handled.
“There’s nothing I can say that would address the pain that has been caused,” he said at Keeling’s sentencing.
Keeling’s youth and addiction contributed to his dealing, Costello said. Keeling also suffers a rare heart condition that suggests he’s unlikely to live past age 40, according to Costello.
The judge urged Prine’s family to consider that Keeling “is really just another person with his own brokenness.”
Oregon has had the fastest rate of growth in adolescent drug overdose deaths from 2018 to 2021 in the country, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
‘LIKE RUSSIAN ROULETTE’
Keeling stood and turned to Prine’s family and friends filling the front two rows of courtroom seats.
“I’m very sorry for what I did. I know I did play a part in the death of this little girl. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than that. I’m a father myself,” he said, standing beside his lawyer. “I understand you guys are hurt. … None of this was intentional. If I could go back and change it, I would a million times.”
Mosman sentenced Keeling to eight years in prison. He must surrender to the U.S. Marshals Service next Tuesday to start his sentence.
Dylan Wilson, 22, the man who sold the pills to the girls, has pleaded guilty to possessing fentanyl with the intent to distribute. He will be sentenced next month.
Prine’s mother said she had caught her daughter smoking marijuana in the past but didn’t know Marie was buying pills online.
“Her death has rocked my world and I will never be the same,” Evans said in court. “I want no one else to suffer like I do. Please help us protect our children.”
Before leaving the courthouse, Evans issued a plea.
“Kids should be taught they can’t buy anything on the street,” she said. “There’s no room for experimenting. It’s like Russian roulette.”
Cedar McMichael liked to joke around, loved to make and listen to music, often spending time in his makeshift studio in the basement of his dad’s home. He played piano, keyboard and wrote songs, his parents said.Courtesy of Family
MORE SALES
Cedar McMichael ingested a quarter of a fentanyl pill he got from a friend, Portland police said. He had gone through residential drug treatment and group and individual therapy in the past, his family said.
Police spoke to the friend, who identified the seller as Karen Elizabeth Comfort, who was 23 at the time. The friend worked with police to set up subsequent drug buys from Comfort, but she wasn’t arrested fast enough.
Just over a month after McMichael’s death, Comfort’s one-time boyfriend, Cody McMahon, 25, died of an overdose. His parents in Hillsboro found him dead in his bed on Feb. 3, 2021. Police found counterfeit blue oxycodone pills nearby.
McMahon’s cellphone revealed he bought the pills hours before his death from Comfort.
Police arranged to have an informant buy more pills from Comfort. She met the informant in front of McMahon’s home a day after he had died to sell more counterfeit oxycodone pills. She didn’t know McMahon was dead, prosecutors said.
Police arrested her then and seized nine counterfeit pills from her that matched the pills found in McMahon’s room. She admitted she had previously sold pills to McMahon, according to a federal affidavit.
She said she provided Narcan with the pills to McMahon “because she knew how dangerous they were,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kemp Strickland told the court.
McMahon’s parents tried using the Narcan to save their son’s life, Strickland said, but it didn’t work.
Cedar McMichael pictured with his mother Wendy Ginsburg and stepdad Josh Ginsburg and holding his younger sister on his shoulders.Courtesy of Family
LINKED TO TWO DEATHS
At her sentencing, Comfort acknowledged that her actions “took away a son” and a friend. She said she struggled to figure out what to say to the families to whom she “brought so much pain and grief.”
“What I can do is accept the consequences of my actions and take full responsibility,” she said. “I’m sorry that your families lost such valued men. And I’m sorry that these words are all I can give you for any sort of comfort.”
U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez sentenced Comfort to six years and six months in prison after she had pleaded guilty to possessing with intent to distribute fentanyl. She’s the first of four to be sentenced in the case involving both McMichael’s and McMahon’s fentanyl overdoses.
“This is an extraordinarily serious offense,” he said. “Ms. Comfort has played her part in the scourge that is fentanyl in our community.’'
Defense lawyer Anthony Schwartz said Comfort was in seventh grade when she began using opiates.
The youngest of nine children, she had been raised in a religious cult in rural Washington and moved to Klamath Falls with her family at age 9, Schwartz said. By 18, she was taking four oxycodone pills a week. Two years later, it was up to 20 pills a day, he said.
She had overdosed three times, lucky to have been revived by emergency responders each time, Schwartz said. She attempted suicide three times, he said.
Even after her arrest and indictment in McMichael’s and McMahon’s deaths, Comfort didn’t stop using fentanyl herself. She had been released pending trial in April 2021 and failed 13 urinalysis tests on supervision, 11 positive for fentanyl, Schwartz said. Her supervision was revoked, and she was taken back into custody in mid-February 2022.
McMichael’s father said he had wanted to forgive the person who sold his son the deadly pills, but then he learned that Comfort’s continued dealing claimed another life.
“It added to my dismay that the person responsible for the death of my son seems not to respond to the weight of her actions like someone that experiences grief and pain for what she has done,” Supanich said at her sentencing. “I hope that I am wrong for the safety of the people around you.”
Supanich described his son as someone who liked to joke around, who loved to make and listen to music, often spending time in his makeshift studio in the basement of his dad’s home. He played piano, keyboard and wrote songs, and liked to fish with his grandfather. He had turned 17 just 20 days before his death.
Wendy Ginsburg, the 17-year-old’s mother, said her son had gotten the fake oxycodone pill from “someone he trusted, a friend” and only a quarter of the pill killed him. Another quarter of the pill was found in his wallet.
She carried a photo of her son to the prosecutor’s table. In it, Cedar McMichael is smiling with his younger sister on his shoulders. His mother and stepfather surround him.
“I’m lost without him,” she said through tears. “He fills my mind, my thoughts, every moment of every day, no matter what I do. I’ll continue to endure a life sentence of torment.”
Sobbing, she couldn’t go on.
Ginsburg stood and carried the photo of her son over to the defense table where Comfort was seated.
She wanted to make sure Comfort saw all that she had lost.
“Can I show this to you?” Ginsburg asked, leaning over the defense table as she held up the photo, before the judge intervened. Comfort wiped tears from her eyes.
Ginsburg then turned to sit down.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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