Port Washington - Heroin is normally considered an urban drug. But Ozaukee County has had more than its share of heroin-related troubles in recent years, including several overdose deaths. And, according to recent court cases, so have Marinette County, population about 12,000, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. "If there is anyplace less likely than Ozaukee County to have a heroin problem, I would have guessed it would be Marinette" and the Upper Peninsula, Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph D. McCormack said when he sentenced two women from that area on heroin-trafficking charges. [continues 583 words]
West Bend - A West Bend woman has been charged with physical abuse of a child after her 2-year-old daughter ate two LSD-laced candies the woman allegedly purchased and brought back to their apartment. According to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court: The mother, Donielle M. Maki, 23, and a friend, Valerie J. Anderson, 19, went to a house in the 500 block of Oak St. in West Bend on Tuesday and bought 10 drug-laced candies that looked like SweeTarts for $7 each from a man at the house. [continues 364 words]
Milwaukee-To- Ozaukee Pipeline Is Busy, Deadly Cedarburg - Jerry R. Cote, 19, who had a history of heroin use, was found dead of a suspected overdose the night of Sept. 15 in a Town of Grafton apartment. If what investigators suspect proves to be true, it will be the fourth heroin-related death in the state's wealthiest and geographically smallest county in less than a year, putting it on at least a par with other more populous Milwaukee-area counties. [continues 881 words]
Man, 20, had faced up to 10 years after Mequon police found dirt bins, heaters Port Washington - A felony drug-trafficking charge against a 20-year-old Mequon man who police said ran an elaborate marijuana-growing operation in the attic of his parents' house was reduced Monday to a misdemeanor charge of marijuana possession. Ozaukee County Judge Joseph D. McCormack found Erick J. Schuchard guilty on Monday of two counts of marijuana possession and one count of possessing drug paraphernalia. [continues 526 words]
Port Washington - Cedarburg teenager Caitlin Schuette pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping provide heroin to a friend, Angela Raettig, 17, resulting in Raettig's overdose death. Schuette's guilty plea to one count of first-degree reckless homicide by delivery of drugs represents the first conviction in a series of heroin cases in Ozaukee County in the past 6 months. Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph D. McCormack set Oct. 9 for sentencing Schuette, 17, who was charged in December under the state's so-called "Len Bias law." [continues 315 words]
Heroin, Oxycodone Cases Are Increasing In Area Clad in an orange Ozaukee County Jail jumpsuit, 19-year-old Ryan J. Hinkle stood before Circuit Judge Tom R. Wolfgram on Wednesday and waived his right to a preliminary hearing on a charge that an officer caught him and 18-year-old Whitney L. Morton with a syringe full of heroin in a Cedarburg public restroom. The arrests are evidence that heroin use by teenagers and young adults continues to be "a huge problem" in Ozaukee County, Sheriff's Detective Jeff Taylor told about 150 parents, teachers and school counselors at the fourth annual Drug Awareness Night. [continues 957 words]
Group Will Be One Of The Largest In The State Law enforcement officials in Racine, Kenosha, Walworth, Jefferson and Dodge counties have agreed to merge their anti-drug task forces, creating one of the largest regional units in Wisconsin.Advertisement The move is being urged upon them by the state, but local officials say it reflects their already close working relationship and will greatly aid their efforts to fight illegal drug trafficking in their communities. Walworth County Sheriff David Graves said formation of the new group "is not a real huge leap because we all work together now and cross over into each others' jurisdictions." [continues 629 words]
After reading Glen Leyden's article "In schools, a different test for teens?" (Sept. 8), about providing more drug tests in schools, I feel very much in favor of this option. As a high school student myself, I am a witness to all the drug and alcohol use that is taking the life out of my fellow students. In my opinion, a percentage of students today feel that to experience life at its fullest, you must experience the feeling of drugs and alcohol. [continues 419 words]
Craig Gallow was smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol when he was 15. He dropped out of Cedarburg High School his sophomore year. He moved out of his parents' home when he was 16. He soon started "moving up the drug tree," he said, eating psychedelic mushrooms, "dropping acid" and taking other hallucinogens. Then he started using cocaine and was soon selling it to finance his own drug use. By the time he was 19 he had fathered two children, by different women, and was headed for the Columbia Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Portage, to serve four years for drug trafficking. [continues 1275 words]
I generally make it a habit not to respond to other peoples letters. This however is a rare exception. Your editor couldn't have said it better: "No marijuana for sick people" (Feb. 26). How about no morphine for sick people, or no cocaine for sick people? Most every drug on the market today that is used to control pain is dangerous in the hands of the public. They are all prescribed to treat serious illnesses. Christopher Petrella has obviously never watched his mother waste away from the ravages of cancer caused by a "legal" drug, tobacco. I would have gotten anything my mother wanted to ease her pain and wouldn't have cared about whether it was legal or not. In case he doesn't know it, morphine, the main pain reliever for cancer patients, is a derivative of the opium poppy, the same plant that produces heroin. Wow, where are we going to get that? Apparently we can get anything we want, as long as it is legal. [continues 395 words]
Port Washington - An Ozaukee County judge ruled Friday that statements made by one of two brothers accused of growing large amounts of marijuana on a Town of Belgium farm are admissible in their trial. But Circuit Judge Walter J. Swietlik scheduled another hearing for Jan. 31 to hear additional testimony on whether statements made by the other brother and evidence gathered on his farm in September should be admitted. Defense attorneys Kirk Obear and Brigette Boyle were asking Swietlik to not allow statements made by both David Burmesch Sr., 74, and his brother, Eugene, 80, claiming the men were not properly informed of their rights and did not understand the questions being asked of them by police. [continues 496 words]
