Attorney: Fatal drug overdose of Unionville woman ‘not a crime’

A Vassar man facing life in prison in connection with the Thanksgiving 2015 fatal overdose of his girlfriend shouldn’t be held responsible for her death, an attorney argued Tuesday.

Caleb Hills, 28, Vassar, could be sentenced to up to life in prison after being charged with delivery of a controlled substance causing death.

An autopsy report of Amanda Byrd, formerly of Unionville and the death in the case, indicates she died of drug intoxication and had cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl in her system.

Witnesses testified during a March 14 preliminary hearing that Hills and Byrd had been working together to sell heroin out of a Reese apartment last Thanksgiving. Those plans ended when Byrd died early that morning of what the medical examiner would later call “drug intoxication.”

The case was bound over to Tuscola County Circuit Court as a result of the March 14 hearing and the trial is expected to take place in October as Hills sits in jail, held on a $350,000 bond.

On Tuesday, however, Caro-based attorney Gregory Bringard, representing Hills, stated his position behind a motion to quash the charge related to Byrd’s death.

“Her death is a tragedy, but it’s not a crime,” Bringard argued. (Read more)

(This story first appeared in the June 29, 2016 issue of The Tuscola Advertiser and can be read online here.)