MAN SENTENCED FOR SALE OF DEADLY DRUG

PORTLAND - A Multnomah County judge sentenced a Portland man to four years
in prison for selling drugs to a woman who died following a rave party.

Jeremy Michael Tomsha pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide
Wednesday and accepted the sentence in the death of 19-year-old Melissa Joy
Flaherty.

Flaherty died March 3, 2001, the morning after taking the drug MDA, a
methamphetamine derivative that is similar to Ecstasy, the popular club drug.

Tomsha, 21, was charged last fall with second-degree manslaughter for
selling Flaherty the drugs that killed her.

His conviction makes him the first person in Multnomah County, and possibly
all of Oregon, to be held criminally responsible for selling the drugs that
caused another person to die.