FRIENDS TO SERVE TIME FOR ROLES IN DEATH

Three Were Sentenced To Jail Or Prison After A Friend Died After
Overdosing On Heroin.

Three friends of Sarah Stellner, who died last year after a heroin
overdose at her Langdon Street apartment, will spend time behind bars
for their roles in getting the heroin to Stellner.

The family of the 20-year-old Soldiers Grove native watched quietly
as Morgan Fenick, 18, of Chicago; Samuel Katz, 27, of Madison; and
Ryan Daley, 24, of Madison; were sentenced to time in jail or prison
for their roles in procuring and injecting the heroin that killed
Stellner on April 26.

The source of the drugs, Lavinia Mull, 26, of Madison, who later
bragged that her heroin was so potent it killed, will be sentenced Tuesday.

Circuit Judge Diane Nicks gave the longest sentence to Daley, who had
pleaded no contest to first-degree reckless homicide for buying the
fatal heroin from Mull. Nicks sentenced him to two years in prison,
followed by five years of extended supervision. Fenick and Katz were
each sentenced to probation with jail terms as a condition of probation.

Reading from a pre-sentence report, Nicks recounted Daley's
"terrible, terrible" history of substance abuse, which over time has
included alcohol and marijuana and progressed to the use of
mushrooms, inhaled rubber cement, cocaine, methadone, LSD and
OxyContin. She noted that Daley, who was once accepted at UW-Madison,
sold marijuana in order to support his own drug habit.

After injecting himself with heroin from the same batch that killed
Stellner, Daley passed out after trying to warn Katz not to let
Fenick and Stellner use it because it was too potent.

The warning was not heeded by Katz, who used heroin for the first
time that night, or by Fenick before she injected Stellner.

Nicks sentenced Fenick, who had pleaded no contest to first-degree
reckless homicide, to seven years of probation with one year in the
Dane County Jail.

"I loved Sarah and I'm in pain and mourning as well," said Fenick,
who entered drug treatment after Stellner's death. "I'm sorry that
such an awful situation had to happen for me to get my life together.
I ask only that I be forgiven."

But Stellner's family will not forgive easily. They did not speak in
court Wednesday, but in a victim impact statement filed with the
court, the family wrote that Fenick abandoned Stellner and left her to die.

"Morgan, with friends like you, Sarah didn't need any enemies," the
Stellner family wrote in its statement. "We will never forgive you
for what you have done to this family. Sarah might have been saved
that night if someone had cared enough to check on her."

Katz, who had pleaded guilty to delivery of heroin, was sentenced to
five years of probation with six months in jail as a condition of probation.

"I cannot imagine the pain you've had to endure," Katz told the
Stellner family. "I'd like to offer my deepest apologies for my role
in bringing this grief upon you."

Katz also said he has a "large moral debt to repay," which he said he
hopes to do by remaining clean and sober.