A suburban man and woman were both sentenced Tuesday after prosecutors said they left a friend to die in the snow when they realized he was overdosing on heroin, according to the DuPage County state's attorney's office.
Hallie Manning, 45, was sentenced to seven years in prison and Anthony Brown, 46, was sentenced to eight years by Judge George Bakalis for the drug induced homicide of 32-year-old John Smrz.
According to the state’s attorney’s office, Smrz was found dead in the snow outside a home shared by Manning and Brown. An autopsy determined Smrz died of a heroin overdose. An investigation headed by the Hanover Park Police with the assistance of the Illinois State Police and state’s attorney’s office “led authorities to Manning and Brown,” the state’s attorney’s office said in a news release.
Manning had given Smrz heroin she had received from Brown, authorities said, and when the couple realized Smrz was overdosing in an apartment shared by Manning and Brown, Brown took him outside in the snow and left him there.
Manning and Brown were each charged on May 2 and held in the DuPage County Jail in lieu of $2 million dollars until their sentencing.
“This is a very sad case of a young man who lost his life to heroin,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin said in a prepared statement. “To successfully rid our streets from this indiscriminate killer, we must not only continue to educate the public about the potentially deadly consequences of heroin use, we must also send a message to these poison peddlers that they will be caught, they will be prosecuted and they will spend a significant amount of time behind bars.”
Hanover Park Acting Chief of Police Mike Menough, also in a prepared statement, said the police department is committed to eliminating what he called a “heroin epidemic” in the community.
Local
“We will continue to aggressively investigate all heroin related crimes and work with our partners and stakeholders to address this issue on all fronts,” Menough said.
