Drug death leads to homicide charge
An Owen man was charged last week with first-degree reckless homicide for allegedly providing the drugs that lead to another man’s death near Greenwood last February. Jacob Faude, 31, could face as long as 55 years in prison if convicted on the homicide charge as well as a second felony count of manufacture/delivery of narcotics.
Faude was arrested on Nov. 8 and charged two days later in Clark County Circuit Court. He is scheduled to make an initial appearance in court on the charges on Nov. 22.
The charges stem from the death of an unidentified man on a side road near Greenwood in the early morning hours of Feb. 26. Clark County Sheriff’s deputies who responded to a 6 a.m. report of a vehicle in a ditch on Sladich Road just southwest of the Greenwood city limits found a woman standing in the roadway and an unresponsive man in a ditch near a van. The man was dead at the scene.
The van was on the north side of Sladich Road, facing west and partially in the ditch. The man’s feet were inside the van, but he was laying face-up in the ditch. Deputies checked for a pulse and started compressions, and EMTs took over life-saving measures when they arrived, but the man was later pronounced dead. The female at the scene said she and the victim had been in Owen the prior evening, and had dropped Faude off at another person’s residence. The victim was driving the female back to her residence in Greenwood, but pulled off onto Sladich Road because he said he thought police were following them. The victim later became unable to drive, the female said, so she took over the driving but did not know where she was. She told deputies she drove the van into the ditch while she was on her cell phone trying to determine their location. After the van went into the ditch, the female said the victim became unresponsive and was “slumping against the dashboard,” according to the criminal complaint. The female said she tried to revive the victim, to no avail, and then got out of the vehicle and walked to the passenger side. When she opened the door, she said the victim fell out into the snow.
Upon further questioning, the female told deputies she and the victim had been out in a bar in Owen the previous night. When they left, they drove to another business in the Owen area, where they met Faude. The victim and Faude were outside in a parking lot for a time before they got in the vehicle and the victim drove Faude to another friend’s house and dropped him off.
The female victim also told investigators that she and the victim had used methamphetamine the night before. Later, after dropping off Faude at the other person’s house, they used drugs again, the female said. She said she believed the victim did not have those drugs prior to meeting Faude. She said she used only a small amount of the drug, but “shortly after snorting the substance she doesn’t recall anything until she woke up driving down a road not knowing where she was.”
An autopsy report showed methamphetamine, amphetamine, fentanyl and norfentanyl present in the victim’s bloodstream.
Faude is in custody in the Clark County Jail with a cash bond set at $20,000.
