Tests confirm Mid’town teen died of heroin ODTownship minor faces drug charges
By dick metzgar
Staff Writer

Drug charges have been lodged against a 17-year-old boy from Middletown after results of a toxicology test confirmed that the cause of death of an 18-year-old Middletown resident was an overdose of heroin, according to Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutor Peter Warshaw.

On the morning of May 22, Middletown South High School senior Geoffrey P. Edwards Jr., 18, was found dead in his bedroom after allegedly ingesting heroin with a friend the night before, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The county medical examiner issued a preliminary finding of heroin overdose, the prosecutor’s office said at the time.

"The toxicology test results definitely confirm that the cause of death was heroin overdose," Warshaw told Greater Media Newspapers this week. "A 17-year-old male juvenile was charged with possession of heroin and use of heroin. He was released to his parents."

Warshaw said toxicology test results in the June 2 death of a Manalapan resident, Michael Chierchia, 18, have not yet been received by the prosecutor’s office, although the cause of death is believed to be a heroin overdose, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Following Chierchia’s death, Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye said the county medical examiner had issued a preliminary finding of heroin overdose in the case, pending results from toxicology tests.

According to Kaye, sometime around 11 p.m. June 1, Chierchia snorted a line of heroin using a straw and the top of a compact disc box. Earlier that same night, some of the youths present at a Coventry Court residence were smoking "blunts," or cigars hollowed out and filled with marijuana, the prosecutor said.

No charges have yet been filed in this case, Warshaw said.

Monmouth County is not the only region in the state where teenagers have died because of heroin overdoses, and in at least one jurisdiction, a grand jury has taken a hard-line approach against the parents of one teenage victim, according to published reports.

A couple showed "conscious disregard" for their 18-year-old son by ignoring the heroin use that killed him, a grand jury in Hunterdon County said in a manslaughter indictment that legal experts said raises questions about parental liability, published accounts reported last week.

The published accounts said the Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office had not requested the indictment of Mary and Lewis Hockenbury in relation to the death of their son, Leonardo DiPasquale.

Criminal law experts quoted in connection with the story said the indictment is very unusual because the parents are not accused of selling or giving drugs to their son, who died of an overdose of heroin at the couple’s home last year.

"Criminal law doesn’t prosecute a failure to act — it only prosecutes acts," George Thomas, a professor of law at the Rutgers School of Law, Newark, was quoted as saying.

Hunterdon County Assistant Prosecutor Katherine Errickson was quoted in the published account as saying the man and woman weren’t presented by her office as possible defendants to the grand jury.

"But after hearing all the evidence, jurors decided on their own that they wanted to consider a charge of manslaughter against the parents," Errickson was quoted as saying.

Warshaw said the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office would not have a comment on the Hunterdon County case at this time.