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SALT LAKE CITY — A Vineyard man who police say shared heroin with a woman who died of a drug overdose last summer faces a federal drug charge.
A complaint filed in U.S. District Court charges Edward Lee Poorman, 22, with one count of distribution of heroin. He is currently in state custody on unrelated drug and theft charges.
Provo police responded to a home July 6, 2016, after a call that a woman, identified in court documents as BW, was not breathing. Efforts to revive her failed.
A neighbor told police she had seen the woman's son outside looking lost and afraid. He told her his mother was inside, but he could not get her to wake up. The neighbor found another neighbor who knew BW. That person went into the house to help and called 911 when she saw the woman's condition.
The medical examiner concluded BW died of a combination of methamphetamine and heroin-derived morphine, according to court documents. Toxicology results showed about twice as much morphine in her system as meth.
Provo detectives found two used syringes and a small amount of black tar heroin in a syringe cap above the medicine cabinet, the charges say. They also found a cellphone in BW’s bedroom. They saw that the woman had a small puncture mark on her left hand consistent with a drug injection.
Police obtained a search warrant to look at the cellphone and Facebook accounts belonging to BW and Poorman.
Agents discovered BW had used a Facebook messenger application and that it contained messages from a multiple-day conversation between Poorman and BW. The conversations, recounted in the complaint filed in court, show the pair coordinating timing and directions to purchase drugs in the days leading up to BW’s death, according to the charges.
Authorities say Poorman admitted in an interview in the Utah County Jail that he helped BW get heroin the night before she died so that she would share some with him.
After they got the heroin from Poorman's source, he injected himself and BW dropped him off at a convenience store. Poorman told police that was the last time he saw her, the charges say.
Poorman is scheduled for an initial appearance on the federal drug charge Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Warner. He faces 20 years in prison if convicted.
The potential penalty for distribution of heroin is 20 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.
