London, Ont. police have charged a 28-year-old Toronto man with manslaughter in connection with the heroin overdose death of a woman in the city in late 2020.
The charges follow an investigation that police say began on Nov. 7, 2020 when first responders were called to a home in the area of Adelaide Street South and Commissioners Road East around 5 a.m. for a report of an unresponsive woman.
Investigators say the woman was pronounced dead upon the arrival of paramedics, and say a later post-mortem examination determined her cause of death to be a heroin overdose.
Police allege that the accused sold the heroin to the victim, and have charged him with manslaughter and trafficking a Schedule I substance.
Joshua Biernacki, 28, is set to appear in court Thursday for the charges.
No further information has been made public, including the age and name of the deceased.
It’s at least the third time police have laid a charge of manslaughter in connection with an overdose death in the city.
In May, police charged a 35-year-old London man, Raed Ghanem, in connection with the Dec. 21, 2021 fentanyl overdose death of 39-year-old Neil Stephen Harvey of Ilderton.
The first case to be seen in the city occurred in December 2021, when police arrested and charged a 33-year-old man, Craig French, with manslaughter in connection with the March 2021 death of Ira Jonathan Zucker, 31, of a fentanyl overdose.
French was also charged with one count of trafficking a Schedule I substance.
According to data from Public Health Ontario, there were 1,037 opioid-related emergency department visits in the London and Middlesex region last year, up from 729 in 2020 and 545 in 2019.
There were 127 opioid-related hospitalizations reported in 2021, up from 101 in 2020 and 75 in 2019, the data says.
Data on opioid-related mortality is incomplete for 2021, however preliminary figures show 103 deaths were reported in the region between the start of January and the end of September, up from 75 during the same period in 2020.
Comments