CLEVELAND — In a small victory in the fight against the opioid epidemic, a convicted drug dealer has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O'Malley announced today that Mark Wisniewski, 43, was sentenced for selling heroin that caused the death of a 59-year-old Bedford man in March 2015.
"The opioid epidemic has taken far too many lives leaving families and friends struggling to cope with the loss of loved ones," said Prosecutor O'Malley in a press release. "Every time we can put an individual like this behind bars, whose actions have caused the death of multiple victims, our community becomes a safer place."
On March 11, 2015, the victim's mother alerted 911 after finding her son unresponsive in the basement of their Bedford home. Bedford Police and Emergency Medical Services found the victim deceased of an apparent overdose. Investigators with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office and the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Heroin Overdose Taskforce processed the scene and found suspected drugs, residue and packaging at the scene that later tested positive for heroin and ruled the victim's cause of death as a heroin overdose.
A DNA profile was recovered from evidence but did not match any existing profiles in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) at the time.
Nearly three years later, in January 2018, the DNA profile was flagged in CODIS to Wisniewski following his arrest and being charged in Summit County for selling heroin that caused the death of a 22-year-old woman in Twinsburg.
In that case, Wisniewski was found guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter, Corrupting Another With Drugs and Trafficking In Drugs by a jury of his peers and sentenced to eight years in prison.
In September 2020, Wisniewski waived his right to a jury trial in Cuyahoga County. Judge Dick Ambrose found him guilty of a number of charges including Involuntary Manslaughter, Corrupting Another With Drugs, Trafficking In Drugs and Drug Possession.
Editor's note: The below video is from July 2020
