Woman sentenced for helping obtain drugs that killed Worthington man – News – The Columbus Dispatch

Lauren K. Spencer’s guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Zachary R. Brown wrapped up a case in which the drug dealer recently was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the deaths of Brown and one other man.

A 28-year-old Columbus woman was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison because she helped a Worthington man make a fentanyl purchase that led to his overdose death.

Lauren K. Spencer’s guilty plea to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Zachary R. Brown wrapped up a case in which the drug dealer recently was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the deaths of Brown and one other man.

Julian M. Bice, 31, of Reynoldsburg, pleaded guilty in October to two counts of involuntary manslaughter for selling the fentanyl that killed Brown on Nov. 20, 2016, and Christopher Ramsey, 23, on June 5, 2017.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Guy Reece sentenced Bice to five years for each death, to run consecutively, in keeping with a recommendation from prosecuting and defense attorneys.

Reece went easier on Spencer, a West Side resident, saying he will recommend that she be granted judicial release as soon as she is eligible, which will be after serving six months.

Brown, 25, arranged to make the drug buy through a man that Spencer was dating. That man asked Spencer to drive Brown to Bice’s Reynoldsburg house to make the purchase. Spencer took Brown’s money and went to the door of the house to buy the drugs from Bice. Brown died of a fentanyl overdose at his Worthington home early the next morning.

Spencer’s defense attorney, Sean Boyle, argued for probation, saying that his client had no record and was merely a fellow addict and “a conduit” through which Brown obtained drugs he was seeking for his addiction.

She was not connected with Ramsey’s death, which occurred after the West Jefferson man purchased heroin laced with fentanyl from Bice in the 2000 block of Stringtown Road in Grove City.

Bice was charged in the overdose cases less than a year after he was wounded during a West Side home invasion in which his 2-year-old daughter was shot to death on Oct. 25, 2016. Police had raided the Pickwick Drive home, then owned by Bice’s girlfriend, in May 2014 and seized more than $6,000 in cash, shotguns, handguns and an assortment of drugs, including marijuana, pills, heroin and crack cocaine.

Four people have been charged in connection with the shooting.

jfutty@dispatch.com

@johnfutty