Crime & Safety
Report: Mahwah Man Sentenced to 3 Years for Helping Friend Get Heroin
The 22-year-old's friend died of a heroin overdose in 2012, report says.
A Mahwah man who helped a friend buy the heroin that led to his overdose death will spend three years behind bars.
According to a NorthJersey.com report, Uldis Mende, 22, showed his friend Harris Apfelbaum, of Suffern, N.Y., where to get heroin in Paterson in October of 2012. Apfelbaum died the next day of an overdose in Park Ridge, the report said.
Mende was tried under the state’s “Strict Liability in Drug-Induced Deaths” law, which Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli has said he is actively pursuing as a means of deterring residents from supplying drugs. The law holds drug dealers and suppliers responsible for overdose deaths.
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In a plea deal carried out Friday, Mende pleaded guilty to two reduced charges, manslaughter and heroin possession, and was sentenced to three years in prison, the report said. He was facing up to 20 years, it said.
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