By Julie Manganis
The Salem News, Mass.
MIDDLETON, Mass. — A Middleton Jail inmate took responsibility last week for possessing the drug that led to a correction officer’s accidental overdose inside the facility last November.
But the inmate’s guilty plea leaves unanswered the question of how the substance, now said to have been fentanyl, got into the Middleton Jail — and exactly how a correctional officer managed to overdose on it.
Matthew Fitzpatrick, 29, of Methuen, who also overdosed on the substance just before the officer found it in his cell, pleaded guilty during a hearing Thursday in Salem District Court to an amended charge of possessing the synthetic opiate fentanyl.
A second charge, delivering drugs to a prisoner, was dropped by prosecutors.
The plea came just days after Sheriff Kevin Coppinger publicly discussed efforts to train and provide safety equipment for correctional officers who respond to overdoses inside the county facility. The changes came in the wake of the officer’s apparent accidental overdose on the morning of Nov. 25 — which occurred just after staff had also attended to Fitzpatrick’s overdose.
During an interview last week, Coppinger indicated that jail officials did not yet know what the substance was. On Monday, after checking with the state drug lab, he said he was told that the substance had still not been tested.
But in court last Thursday, a prosecutor and Fitzpatrick’s lawyer told Judge Emily Karstetter the substance was fentanyl. That’s based on a representation by Fitzpatrick, his attorney said.
Fitzpatrick told jail investigators in December that he did not know specifically what the powdered substance was, though he suspected it was opiates of some kind, when he ate it to avoid having it be discovered by officers searching cells one morning last November.
Investigative reports of the incident also note that the jail’s director of security raised questions about a possible role of Fitzpatrick’s cellmate, a man who is serving a 2 1/2 year jail term for his role in a conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the jail. Both Fitzpatrick and the cellmate denied he was involved, however.
Coppinger said that without additional evidence, there is no basis to charge the cellmate or investigate further.
“We’ll take any investigation as far as we can,” Coppinger said.
Fitzpatrick, questioned by the jail’s director of security, David Earle, in December, said that he had just stepped out of the shower on the evening of Nov. 24, and was toweling off when he noticed a folded piece of paper on the floor. He said he picked it up and brought it back to his cell. The paper contained a brown and white powder, he told Earle.
The shower area has only a limited number of surveillance cameras, Coppinger said, and investigators were not able to see anyone who might have left drugs there.
The morning after he found the drug, Nov. 25, officials conducted several room searches on the unit where Fitzpatrick was held, according to reports filed in the case.
Fitzpatrick told Earle he saw what was taking place and, fearing that he would be caught with contraband, decided to eat the brown and white powder, according to the report.
It was the first time he had ever used opiates, he told the investigator.
He immediately overdosed on the substance and, after being given Narcan, was hospitalized, partly as a precaution and partly so that doctors could remove fluid from his lungs, according to court papers.
Fitzpatrick has no criminal history involving drug distribution, and was serving a sentence for violating his probation in a Lowell domestic abuse and kidnapping case from 2012.
Fitzpatrick was found, unresponsive, in his cell by officers who were on the cell block to deliver items from the jail commissary, according to investigative reports that are part of Fitzpatrick’s case file. He was given multiple doses of Narcan and then taken to Beverly Hospital.
After his release from the hospital, Earle interviewed Fitzpatrick.
Among his questions was whether his cellmate had anything to do with the drugs. Earle was the lead investigator in the cellmate’s 2014 conspiracy case.
Fitzpatrick insisted that he did not, telling Earle the cellmate was asleep all morning.
The cellmate, questioned by Earle, offered a similar account, also telling the investigator that he was asleep all morning, and didn’t see Fitzpatrick or the drugs.
The inmate “again advised that he was asleep until he woke up to see Fitzpatrick overdosing,” Earle wrote.
Correctional officer also overdosed
After responding to the reported overdose and assisting Fitzpatrick, a correctional officer went into Fitzpatrick’s cell, that officer wrote in an incident report. The officer said in his report that he found a mirror with powder on it, a piece of paper with powder residue, and a broken pill in Fitzpatrick’s cell. He collected the items in a used food container and brought them to the infirmary, where he transferred the items into a urine specimen cup.
“Immediately after doing so I felt a very intense feeling being dizzy and confusion,” the officer wrote. He stopped a co-worker and told him “something very bad” was happening, then was unable to speak. The officer then recalled being unable to see, but could hear a nurse describe his condition and call for someone to bring Narcan. He woke up wearing an oxygen mask, feeling “shaky and nauseous,” and was taken to Beverly Hospital.
The officer told Earle that while a blood sample was taken at the hospital, he was told that it would “probably not come back positive for opiates because of the minuscule amount he may have ingested,” and that the sample was not tested.
Fitzpatrick’s sentence for the drug possession charge, a year in jail with six months to be served and the balance suspended for two years, will overlap with the probation violation sentence he’s already serving, adding about a month to his time in custody. He’s scheduled for release April 22.
Court papers say Fitzpatrick also apologized to the officer. “He actually feels quite badly about the situation,” his attorney, Sean Wynne, told the judge during the court hearing.
Wynne said Tuesday he was not familiar with Fitzpatrick’s cellmate’s history, but said his client wanted to resolve the case during his court appearance last week, even though the results of drug lab tests on the substance found in his cell had not been completed.
Thursday’s hearing had been scheduled as an argument on a motion by Wynne to dismiss the charge of delivering drugs to a prisoner on the grounds that there was no evidence that the drugs were in the possession of anyone else. Prosecutors, after reviewing the motion, agreed to drop the charge without a hearing, however.
Carrie Kimball Monahan, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said defendants can choose to plead guilty at any point in a case. “That is his right,” she said.
©2018 The Salem News (Beverly, Mass.)