By Tiffany Williams –
At Garden City High School on Rockaway Ave in Garden City, New York, 17-year-old Grace Wrightington was a rising senior, a straight-A student who mentored classmates with special needs and a member of the chess club.
July 4, 2023, Grace’s parents, William and Tricia Wrightington thought their daughter was sleeping in, but when William went to wake his daughter up, he started screaming, “Grace is dead, Grace is dead.”
At 1:21 p.m., members of the Garden City Police Department responded to a 911 caller screaming “she’s dead!” Upon arrival, officers found Grace Wrightington deceased in her bedroom after suffering an apparent drug overdose.
Two blue MH 30 pills were recovered from Wrightington’s purse, and after subsequent testing by the Nassau County Medical Examiner’s Office, they were found to contain fentanyl.
The medical examiner also determined that Wrightington’s cause of death was acute fentanyl intoxication.
According to UCLA Health, an average of 22 adolescents 14 to 18 years of age died in the U.S. each week in 2022 from drug overdoses, raising the death rate for this group to 5.2 per 100,000 — driven by fentanyl in counterfeit pills. Adolescent overdoses, UCLA Health says, “More than doubled among this group between 2019 and 2020, and have since intensified to such an extent that the death count equals a high school classroom each week, and is now the third largest cause of pediatric deaths behind firearm-related injuries and motor vehicle collisions.”
At Mass General for Children in Boston, Dr. Scott Hadland, the Chief of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, says, “Fentanyl has rapidly become a leading cause of death in American teens.”
Just 12 hours before Grace Wrightington overdosed, in a “selfie” video that was taken on her phone, Grace is talking to herself, discussing that she had been buying drugs on the street. In the video, Grace describes how she became addicted to pills containing what she believed was fentanyl.
Grace met Daquan Booker, 34, of West Babylon, New York, on two separate occasions, and he allegedly sold her illegal opioid pills. June 30, 2023, Booker met with Wrightington at Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City and allegedly sold her pills that resembled oxycodone. That was just four days before Grace’s father found her deceased in her bedroom.
465 days after William and Tricia Wrightington found their daughter deceased, the Garden City Police Department arrested Booker on October 11, 2024. Booker was indicted on two counts of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Third Degree and two counts of Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the Third Degree.
Before Judge Helene Gugerty, Booker pleaded not guilty, was released to pretrial services with electronic monitoring, ordered to surrender his passport, and an additional curfew was ordered.
“Daquan Booker could not be charged with Grace’s death because of deficiencies in New York State law that effectively handcuff district attorney’s when seeking to prosecute dealers for the overdose deaths caused by the drugs they sell,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly said. “Hundreds of people die every year across Long Island from overdose. The Wrightington family is not the first to go through the anguish of losing a child and finding out the person responsible for selling the fatal drugs cannot be held accountable for their death. If our laws do not change, they sadly will not be the last.”
At the New York State Capitol in Albany, there is a pending bill called Chelsea’s Law that would make manslaughter easier to prove for dealers peddling deadly drugs. NY State Senate Bill 2023-S7790, commonly known as a ‘death by dealer’ statute, would amend the penal law to devise a new statutory scheme around ‘drug-induced manslaughter’. The bill is sponsored by State Senator Anthony H. Palumbo, the ranking member of Senate Codes and Judiciary Committees.
Senator Palumbo says, “The fentanyl epidemic has impacted every corner of our state and every segment of society. It doesn’t discriminate. It has taken both young and old, rich and poor. Time is a luxury we no longer have when addressing this issue.”