In Westmoreland County Court yesterday, a jury found 23-year-old Dylan Blair of Saltsburg guilty of drug delivery resulting in death and two counts of delivery of a controlled substance for selling fentanyl-laced heroin to a Derry woman who overdosed and died on the day after Christmas in 2016.
It took more than thirty months to bring Blair to trial and only three days for that trial to conclude, with the defense offering not witnesses on his behalf and the prosecution relying on the testimony of a Latrobe man who spoke of twice overdosing on the same batch of drugs. With the defense contending that there was no evidence that it was specifically the fentanyl/heroin mix that caused 38-year-old Michelle Spillar’s death, prosecutors countered with famed pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who blamed fentanyl for the death and testified that the Tylenol and Benadryl in Spillar’s blood could not have been fatal.
In his closing argument, Assistant D.A. Jim Lazar urged the jury to believe the testimony of 25-year-old Tyler Kachmar. He said Kachmar overdosed twice on the same drugs, but did not die because he had people with him to revive him. Spillar was alone when she died in the bedroom of her home.
Blair was apprehended at the Days Inn outside of Blairsville about five months after Spillar’s death.
All three of the charges against Blair are felonies. He faces as many as twenty years in prison but his attorney indicated that he will ask for no more than five years, under state sentencing guidelines.
