Accused drug dealer can't be held accountable for teen's overdose death, Nassau DA says

The frustrated parents of Grace Wrightington, a Garden City high school senior who died of a fentanyl overdose last July, watched the man accused of selling their daughter the deadly drug released without bail on Tuesday, charged with third-degree drug crimes.

Tricia and Bill Wrightington found their 17-year-old daughter, a straight-A student, lifeless in her bed on July 4, 2023, after she had taken blue pills that she believed were painkillers Percocet or OxyContin.

Nassau County prosecutors say Daquan Booker, 34, of West Babylon, chatted up Grace on her way to school and sold her drugs on at least three occasions, including the ones that killed her.

He was charged with two counts of drug possession and two counts of drug sale, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said, because New York law does not allow her to charge him with the teen’s death.

“That you can't be charged with manslaughter in that case … Just to us, that unfolding realization feels like a betrayal of the legal system,” Tricia Wrightington said, standing with her husband outside the courthouse.

The current charges carry a 9-year maximum prison sentence if he’s convicted. Manslaughter is a higher-level felony that carries a longer prison sentence.

Booker knew they were illegal and had told Grace the pills were disguised as blue vitamin pills to fool police, Assistant District Attorney Lee Genser said.

Donnelly said Booker cannot be held responsible for Grace’s death because prosecutors must prove, under the law, that he knew not only that he was selling an illegal and deadly drug, but that he also disregarded the risks to his customer and sold it anyway.

“The burden for prosecutors to charge a drug dealer with the death of someone they deal to is incredibly high,” she said.

Booker had already been charged last December in Suffolk County with four counts of fentanyl sales. He pleaded guilty to those charges and agreed to go through treatment in drug court to avoid incarceration. Booker was due in court in Suffolk County on Tuesday in that case, but it was rescheduled for Wednesday because of the conflict with the Nassau arraignment on the new charges.

Garden City police arrested Booker for the drug sale to Grace on Friday as he headed into the Riverhead jail to visit a friend, according to Donnelly. They found a bag of cocaine on him, she said, a likely violation of the conditions of his plea agreement.

Despite that apparent violation and his alleged role in the death of Grace, bail could not be set in the case because drug dealing is not considered a violent crime.

“The court is constrained not to set bail because the law does not provide the discretion to set bail,” State Supreme Court Justice Helene Gugerty said at the hearing.

She ordered him restricted to home detention when he is not working at his job as a home health aide.

The district attorney called on the State Legislature to pass Chelsea’s Law, a bill that would allow prosecutors to charge drug dealers with manslaughter or aggravated manslaughter if a customer dies of an overdose. 

“It's incredibly frustrating when I think that nine years is the max he can get — he killed somebody,” Donnelly said.

“This is an issue we sadly know all too well,” the prosecutor said. “One hundred seventy people died of an opioid drug overdose in Nassau County last year; 151 of those 170 deaths were due to fentanyl.”

The Wrightingtons said they also would like to see the legislation pass.

“The laws need to catch up,” Bill Wrightington said. “They need to catch up, and they need to penalize and put perpetrators who are doing this in jail. There needs to be accountability.”