Teenager Died of Drug Overdose in Motel Room
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Columbia, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for renting the motel room where a 16-year-old female died of a heroin overdose.
Jon Patrick Washington, also known as “Doom," 30, of Columbia, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brian C. Wimes to five years in federal prison without parole. Washington has been in federal custody since his arrest in 2014.
On Jan. 28, 2016, Washington pleaded guilty to maintaining a drug-involved premise. Washington admitted that he rented a room at the Providence Inn and Suites Motel, 1718 Providence Road in Columbia (now closed), for the purpose of using heroin from April 1 to April 3, 2014.
Columbia police officers responded to a suspected heroin overdose death at Washington’s motel room on April 3, 2014. The victim was a 16-year-old female. Based on information from a confidential informant, Washington was located later the same day and brought in for questioning by law enforcement. He admitted that he had injected the juvenile victim with heroin at about 8:30 p.m.
Washington told law enforcement officers that the juvenile was nodding off from a prior heroin injection, and that the juvenile and another individual (who Washington claimed supplied the heroin to the juvenile) kept asking him to help shoot the juvenile up again. Washington said the needle was already filled with heroin prior to him injecting the juvenile. Washington told officers that he found a vein on the juvenile on his second attempt.
Washington admitted that another individual and the juvenile victim gave him the money to rent the motel room. Washington had previously been renting another room at the motel, but moved into the new room on April 1. Washington admitted that he knew the room was being used by the juvenile to use heroin.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lawrence E. Miller. It was investigated by the Columbia, Mo., Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
