Tammy Smith remembers the last time her adoptive son walked out the door of their Akron home.
“He told me he loved me and he would come back,” Tammy Smith said of Tuesday night, when 16-year-old Andrew Frye left with her niece — his biological mother, Heather Frye — to go swimming at a motel.
Smith, who is Frye’s great-aunt and legal guardian, didn’t approve. But keeping the teenager away from his mother had become difficult because he yearned for affection.
Watching a television news broadcast Friday afternoon, Smith quivered as the anchor spoke of a teenage boy found dead of a suspected heroin overdose at a motel, discovered lifeless by a woman who told police she wanted to be the “fun weekend mom.”
“I don’t have much tears anymore,” said Smith, rolling back her black hooded sweatshirt and removing her thin eyeglasses to reveal puffy eyes. “Every time I think of Andrew, he comes. I try not to cry, but he’ll never come through my door again.”
Criminal charges filed
Heather and her mother, Brenda Frye, 52, are charged in Andrew’s death with involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony punishable by up to 11 years in prison. Both also face lesser charges including evidence tampering, corrupting another with drugs and child endangering. Two others — Heather’s friend Jessica Irons, 34, and Brenda’s friend Donald Callaghan, 58 — also were charged in connection with Andrew’s death, though their charges are not as serious.
All four adults charged in the case have histories of drug-related crime, according to court records. Heather spent about two years in prison over three stints from 2007 to 2014, prison records show.
At a news conference Friday, Summit County Sheriff Steve Barry condemned Heather and Brenda’s alleged involvement in Andrew’s death.
“He was assisted in obtaining the product by family members, who are supposed to be the ones who protect their children,” he said.
He called Andrew’s death a “senseless tragedy” and said the evidence “turns his stomach.”
Andrew and Heather
Tammy, 54, and her late fiance John Sabini took custody of Andrew when the boy was 6 months old. Court records indicate his mother picked up her first of many drug charges when the boy was just 3 years old.
Tammy and Sabini raised him, their three children treating the boy like a brother.
Sabini died of natural causes in 2010. Andrew took it hard.
“That was really a bad point in life for Andrew,” said David Smith, Tammy’s 30-year-old son.
After Sabini’s death, Andrew began seeking out his biological mother, explained Tammy’s children.
“He just wanted his mother and to be around [her] no matter how bad it was,” said Julie Andrea, Tammy’s 33-year-old daughter. “He wanted her to stop. He thought that if he was with her when she was using, at least he was with her.”
Keeping Andrew away from his biological mother became increasingly difficult after Tammy and Andrew moved out of a trailer park in Green and into an Akron apartment. The move, they said, was supposed to be for the best.
But Andrew struggled to make the transition at East High School, away from his friends. And it became easier for Heather to meet her son around the corner from Tammy’s apartment.
Andrew’s last night
On Tuesday night, Heather knocked on Tammy’s door to take the teenager shopping then swimming at a Motel 8.
Tammy never saw him again.
The Smith family regrets letting him go, as they had every six months to a year when they said Heather came around promising that she was clean and things would be better.
“Never in a million years did we think she would get him into heroin,” Andrea said. “We think the only reason he did it was to get her approval.”
Tammy said Andrew’s death leaves a void in their family, recalling the times she took the boy to the doctor or to school or how she felt folding his clothes when she received the news of his death. “I would give my life up if I could. I would truly trade places with him.”
“I miss that boy so bad. I wanted him to grow up and go to college,” Tammy said. “She stole him. I feel broken, I really do.”
Addiction at the center
In a separate interview, Heather’s former boyfriend Robert Corn stressed to the Beacon Journal on Friday that drug addiction — not malice or neglect — is at the center of the tragedy.
“Heather’s not a monster,” he said. “What she did was very wrong, but it was the dope. It wasn’t her. ... She is an absolute sweetheart when she’s not using.”
Heather had been using drugs for decades after her mother introduced her to them, Corn said.
“Brenda was the boulder that smashed everything,” he said. “Everything spins down from her.”
Corn said he and Andrew were very close.
“He called me Dad,” he said. “It kills me to know what happened to him.”
He described Heather and Andrew as creative, happy people. Family said Andrew liked animals, building computers, playing with his cousin’s children and singing.
The opiate epidemic
Margaret Scott, deputy chief assistant prosecutor, said the ongoing opiate epidemic has made situations like Andrew’s more common.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual. It’s a horrible tragedy because of the age we see here,” she said, “but it’s not unusual to see family members, unfortunately, procuring and giving the heroin and fentanyl to one another.”
Dr. Lisa Kohler, the county’s medical examiner, said her office confirmed there was heroin in his blood, and preliminary reports show he used fentanyl, too. Fentanyl is an opiate drug similar to heroin but 40 to 50 times stronger that dealers sell either on its own or mixed — sometimes without buyers knowing — with heroin to increase their products’ potency.
“There was definite evidence of intravenous drug use,” she said.
Regardless of whether it’s heroin or fentanyl, the prosecutor said officials would continue to charge anyone who gives drugs to other people.
“If you’re going to give someone else your poison and you know it’s likely going to kill them,” Scott said, “we’re going to look at holding you criminally responsible.”
Medical examiner spokesperson Gary Guenther said if heroin is confirmed as the cause of Andrew’s death, he’ll be the youngest victim of the ongoing opiate epidemic in Summit County since at least 2014.
Andrew was found with needle puncture marks on his body. Family confirmed initial reports that he was diabetic, which explains the marks.
Wednesday’s 911 call
Andrew was found dead Wednesday evening in a Super 8 Hotel room in Green that he shared with his mother and Irons. They had rented the room so they could go swimming, according to medical examiner’s records. The three of them — and possibly his grandmother — used the drugs in the hotel room, though detectives said Heather directed Andrew to shoot up in a bathroom because she didn’t like to watch him use drugs.
According to a 911 call released by the sheriff’s office Friday, Andrew’s mother reported his death at about 6:45 p.m. She was distraught and panicked on the phone, screaming for help and hysterically sobbing.
She told a dispatcher she woke to find him dead.
“He’s not breathing,” she said through tears. “I woke up and my son is so cold.”
She told a dispatcher “it has to be” a drug overdose that killed him and asked whether she was allowed to touch him.
“Can I pick him up and hold him please? ... I want to hold him,” she said on the phone. “I just want my baby back.”
Nick Glunt can be reached at 330-996-3565 or nglunt@thebeaconjournal.com. Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com.