EVERETT — Rita Fahie’s son is dead because of $2,400.
Marquise Brown was shot once in the head last summer during a soured drug deal. The 23-year-old died alone in the street because the painkillers he handed over appeared to be fake.
“I can’t talk with my son. I can’t hear him say ‘I love you, Mama.’ I can’t even argue with him anymore,” Fahie said.
She told a judge on Friday her son’s killer doesn’t deserve leniency.
Jerome Blake “made a choice to take my son away from me,” she said. “He shouldn’t have. He had a choice. He made the wrong one.”
Blake’s actions not only devastated her family, but his own, Fahie said. He deserves the maximum sentence, she added.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne sentenced Blake to 30 years in prison, about a year short of the high-end sentence. Blake must serve 25 years before being eligible to receive any time off for good behavior. A jury convicted Blake of first-degree murder with a firearm. He didn’t have felony convictions before the homicide.
Blake, 25, didn’t apologize on Friday. Instead, he said that his “heart and prayers” go out to Brown’s family.
Last June, Blake and some others pooled their money to purchase some OxyContin. They handed $2,4000 over to Brown to purchase the pills. Brown came back with pills that couldn’t be smoked. That decreased their value on the street.
Altering the pills give people a faster high, a rush that they don’t feel if they swallow the tablet whole.
The drug manufacturer changed the formula in August in an effort to make the drug more tamper-resistant so people can’t grind it up for smoking or snorting.
It’s likely the pills Brown sold were counterfeit OxyContin, or a different drug all together. Police don’t know because the drugs were never recovered.
“The murder of Marquise Brown was not done in the heat of battle, but after the defendant had apparently determined that enough time had been spent attempting to get his money back,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson wrote in court papers. “In the end, Marquise Brown was shot dead on a north Everett Street over $2,400.”
The judge said that none of the players that night “deserved a good citizenship award.” The shooting, however, was unprovoked, Wynne said.
“It was a cold, callous execution of Marquise Brown,” he said.
Wynne handed down the sentence. Then he spoke to the families. The death of a young man and a long prison term for another young man is a tragedy for both of the families, he said.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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