EVERETT – A jury convicted Avery Bresnan of a rare drug-related homicide charge Wednesday in the 2020 fentanyl overdose death of a young Monroe man.
Following a nearly weeklong trial in Snohomish County Superior Court, jurors began deliberating around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. They took over a day to come to a verdict, convicting Bresnan, 26, of controlled substance homicide in the death of Jayden Barker-Fisher, 20.
“Desperate people put in desperate situations make desperate decisions,” deputy prosecutor Adam Sturdivant told the jury Tuesday. “Jayden’s desperate decisions got him killed. There’s no question he was in the throes of addiction, there’s no question that he died from fentanyl, and the state’s convinced you there’s no question where he got those from.”
Bresnan, of Sedro-Woolley, and Barker-Fisher were acquaintances from high school, according to charges. Barker-Fisher had been struggling with substance abuse in the months leading up to his death.
According to the charging papers, Bresnan would “often brag to his customers that his pills killed people.”
Starting April 15, Facebook messages between the defendant and Barker-Fisher showed the two talking about exchanging pills, according to charging papers.
Barker-Fisher told his aunt he had been dealing with back pain and was prescribed painkillers, according to charges. He was out of his prescription, but told his aunt that his friend ‘Avery’ sold pills.
On April 28, Bresnan and Barker-Fisher had plans to “rob a meth user, split the cash and get drugs,” defense attorney Taylor Severns told the jury Tuesday.
Messages from that night show Barker-Fisher and Bresnan discussed getting gas money and heading to Monroe together, according to court papers. The texts showed Barker-Fisher was back home after 10:30 p.m., saying, “I’d rather not leave again tonight after everything that happened.”
On Tuesday, Severns told jurors there were “a lot of unanswered questions” in the case.
“We don’t know where Jayden and Avery went, we don’t know who they saw,” Severns said. “We don’t know who sold the drugs to either of them, we don’t know if they got the drugs from the same person, or split up and went their separate ways.”
The next morning, Barker-Fisher’s cousin found him unresponsive and bleeding from his mouth in his bedroom, according to the charges. Barker-Fisher’s cousin told police he found a Tic Tac container in Barker-Fisher’s room with 4½ counterfeit oxycodone M30 pills inside, according to the charges.
A toxicology report found 7.6 nanograms of fentanyl per milliliter of Barker-Fisher’s blood, along with THC, caffeine and Citalopram, an antidepressant.
The Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office determined he died of an accidental fentanyl overdose.
This is Bresnan’s first felony conviction, so he faces between 4¼ and 5⅔ years in prison for controlled substance homicide under state guidelines. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 12.
Maya Tizon: 425-339-3434; maya.tizon@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @mayatizon.
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