A Forest Lake man has been sentenced to a year in the Ramsey County workhouse and seven years of probation for selling fentanyl-laced heroin to a childhood friend who then overdosed and died at a White Bear Lake hotel in 2021.
William James Dykes, 31, was charged with third-degree murder last year in Ramsey County District Court in connection with the death of 28-year-old Joseph Michael Nash at the Best Western Plus along U.S. 61.
William James Dykes (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Judge Nicole Starr on Friday followed a plea agreement that Dykes reached with the prosecution in March, giving him 364 days in the workhouse and staying a seven-year prison term in favor of probation. He was ordered to complete 48 hours of community service at a treatment recovery facility.
According to the criminal complaint, officers responded to the hotel about 11 a.m. Nov. 8, 2021, on a possible overdose and found Nash unresponsive in a second-floor room. Medics transported him to Regions Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A 27-year-old woman and 25-year-old man were in the room when officers arrived and both said Nash had used heroin shortly before his death. They didn’t tell officers where Nash got the heroin, and neither of them made themselves available for follow-up interviews throughout the investigation, the complaint says.
An autopsy showed Nash died of mixed drug toxicity and that he had fentanyl and alcohol in his system.
Nash’s former girlfriend told police she had spoken with the 25-year-old man and that he said Nash asked him if “snorting heroin was better than smoking it,” the complaint states. Nash snorted the heroin and became unresponsive five minutes later.
Investigators spoke to Nash’s mother. She said that on the night before his death, he had left his Apple Watch at her home and she was able to monitor messages between her son and Dykes. In the messages, Nash asked Dykes when he was going to arrive at the hotel.
She said her son and Dykes grew up together and played football together. Dykes also used to work for her family’s business, she said.
She said that she called Dykes the morning of her son’s death because she was looking for him. Dykes said he sold her son marijuana.
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In a recorded phone conversation, the 25-year-old man told Nash’s former girlfriend that Dykes had delivered what was “supposed to be heroin but that everything is cut with fentanyl these days,” the complaint reads.
Cellphone records showed texts between Nash and Dykes that mentioned meeting at the hotel the night before the death. They also showed that Nash paid Dykes through Venmo.
Dykes told investigators that he and Nash were childhood friends and he was not sure when he last saw Nash. When asked what he knew about his death, Dykes asked to end the interview.
Dykes’ attorney did not return messages left Monday asking for comment on his sentence.
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