By Matt Zapotosky, Washington Post
One was a doting father and Army soldier, known back home in the South for his love of video games and mud riding. Another was a striking young woman from Mantua, Va., who wrote poetry and dreamed of becoming a chef. The third was an avid Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan who never shied away from a political debate and took in family members when they needed a place to stay.
Ann Schachinger’s daughter, Kara, 22, died of a heroin overdose in February 2012. The man who sold drugs to her, Eugene Williams, was sentenced in federal court Friday. (Eva Russo/For The Washington Post)
Strangers to one another in life, they shared an addiction to heroin, fueled by the same D.C. drug dealer. And one by one, they died using a deadly substance that authorities say has permeated the East Coast, leaving a trail of grieving family members.
“It’s ridiculous. I can’t count on two hands how many of his friends and people that he has known in the last five years have died of overdoses,” said Ellen Pearson, whose 33-year-old son, Josh Pearson, fatally injected himself last April. “For parents who think that it can’t ever happen to them, well, it can.”
On Friday, the longtime D.C. dealer whose drugs were used by Josh Pearson and others was sentenced in Virginia federal court to 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors had asked that Eugene Asomani Williams, a father who went by the moniker “Shine,” spend 35 years in prison so that “no other addicts will become corpses because of drugs” he sells. Family members say they are glad Williams will be locked away, although they know taking one dealer off the street is unlikely to stem the flow of heroin.
“There’s 150 Shines in D.C. . . . They see the money come through the window, and they put the packages in the door, and they don’t think twice about it,” said Dan Simpson, who has struggled with addiction himself and whose half sister, 22-year-old Kara Schachinger, was one of the three who died.
Authorities in the D.C. area and across the country have cautioned for months that more and more people are abusing heroin — a narcotic with a power users do not fully understand. And federal prosecutors in Alexandria have been particularly aggressive in pursuing those trafficking the drug, especially when young users are victimized by it.
The three who died using drugs sold by Williams — Pearson, Schachinger and 23-year-old Army Pvt. Timothy Huffman — have remarkably similar stories. All were young, loved, full of potential. None of their mothers was prepared to bury them.
“I thought someone was just messing with me,” said Holly Garity, whose son, Huffman, was stationed at Fort Belvoir when he overdosed. “He was more like a mama’s boy. Anybody said anything bad about his mama, he would take care of it.”
There were signs. Garity, who lives in Alabama, said she had heard that her son was smoking marijuana some time before he left for the Army. Ann Schachinger said that she became concerned when her daughter began hanging around men in their 20s when she was just a teenager and student at Fairfax County’s W.T. Woodson High School.
Still, she said she was shocked to learn the drug her daughter chose.
“When I was in school, we didn’t touch heroin,” Schachinger said. “We were terrified of it.”
Ellen Pearson said she noticed her son — an outgoing, affable young man — becoming increasingly moody around 2010. In 2011, she said, he overdosed but survived.
He was jailed for more than a year for drug-related offenses and had been out only a few months when he injected the fatal dose, she said.
“Really, the last 31 / 2 years were about his addiction,” Ellen Pearson said. “It’s just too strong. Once you do it, it’s really hard to walk away from, and not many people ever do.”
Huffman was the first to die. According to court records, he was injected with what would prove to be the fatal dose on Jan. 12, 2012, at his residence at Fort Belvoir. Kara Schachinger was next. She injected herself with heroin in a bathtub on Feb. 3, 2012, and drowned after she slipped beneath the water, court records show.
Ann Schachinger said she woke up in a start that morning, her motherly instincts telling her something was wrong. Seeing her daughter’s bedroom door open — and the bathroom door shut and locked — she said she frantically searched for a screwdriver to break in.
Read the full story by Matt Zapotosky, Washington Post.
