Over the last week, three men have been sentenced to federal prison in connection with drug overdoses that led to the deaths of three women in Dubuque.
Forty-seven-year-old Richard Leroy Parker of Dubuque has been sentenced to life in prison for giving heroin to a wman who overdosed and died last year. Twenty-six-year-old Jervonie Murphy of Dubuque has been sentenced to 33 months in prison. Murphy admitted in court that he sold heroin to a woman and that woman shared the heroin with another woman, who overdosed and died.
The third case involves 28-year-old Jay Rickert of from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who has been sentenced to a year and a half in prison. Court documents indicate he bought an illegal drug online and had it shipped to a 22-year-old woman in Dubuque. A digital scale and instructions on how much to use were included in the mailing.
Rickert and the woman both thought the drug was DMT, an hallucinogenic drug. It actually was fentanyl, a similar looking but more potent drug. Rickert and the woman were talking via Skype when she took the fatal dose of fentanyl.