Andover man secretly indicted on charges of selling drugs that caused overdose death

Jill Harmacinski, The Eagle-Tribune, North Andover, Mass.
·1 min read

Mar. 25—SALEM, Mass. — An Andover man was secretly indicted and charged with involuntary manslaughter after the December 2019 drug overdose death of another Andover man, authorities confirmed.

Joseph Comeau, 25, was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Salem Superior Court in connection with the fatal overdose of Max Durham, who was 20 at the time of his death, said Carrie Kimball, spokesperson for District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett.

Authorities say Comeau distributed fentanyl that resulted in Durham's fatal overdose.

Judge Jeffrey Karp set bail for Comeau at $7,500 cash and ordered him to remain under house arrest with a GPS monitoring device.

On March 18, the Essex Grand Jury secretly indicted Comeau following a joint investigation by Andover Police, Essex State Police Detective Unit and the Essex District Attorney's Office that began in December 2019.

Comeau turned himself in to Andover Police on a warrant Wednesday.

In court Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Kelleen Forlizzi told the court that on Dec. 6, 2019, the defendant arranged to sell drugs to Durham in Manchester, N.H. Durham drove to Manchester with a friend who is believed to have witnessed the transaction. The defendant is accused of bragging about the strength of the drugs, which ultimately turned out to be straight fentanyl. Durham was found dead in his Andover home the next morning, authorities said.

Defense attorney Dan Murphy is representing Comeau.

This is a developing story. Check back to eagletribune.com for more details.

Follow staff reporter Jill Harmacinski on Twitter @EagleTribJill.

Recommended Stories

  • Reservoir Media In Talks to Go Public Via Roth II SPAC

    (Bloomberg) -- Music publisher Reservoir Media Management is in talks to go public through a merger with Roth Ch Acquisition II Co., a blank-check firm, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.A merger between Roth and New York-based Reservoir, founded by Golnar Khosrowshahi, would value the combined entity at more than $700 million, said the person. Terms aren’t finalized and it’s possible talks could fall apart.A Roth representative declined to comment and representatives for Reservoir didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.Roth said in a filing last month that on Feb. 15 it entered a mutually exclusive non-binding letter of intent with a target company, without naming it.Reservoir Media was founded in 2007 and represents over 130,000 copyrights and 26,000 master recordings from artists including Sheryl Crow, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars and John Denver. A Spotify playlist on its website featuring Reservoir Media tracks also includes music from Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande.The company also owns film music rights including scores created by Hans Zimmer featured in The Lion King, Gladiator and the Pirates of the Caribbean series, among others.Reservoir describes itself as family-owned. It’s backed by Vancouver-based Persis Holdings, a firm founded by Hassan Khosrowshahi, the Persis website shows.The Roth SPAC, led by CEO Byron Roth, raised $115 million in a December initial public offering.If a deal between Roth and Reservoir is agreed, it would follow the agreement struck by Anghami, the Abu Dhabi-based music-streaming service that claims over 70 million users, with a SPAC earlier this month.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

  • Brazil hits record 100,000 coronavirus cases in a day, piling pressure on Bolsonaro

    Brazil on Thursday registered a record 100,158 new coronavirus cases within 24 hours, the Health Ministry said, underlining the scale of a snowballing outbreak that is becoming a major political crisis for President Jair Bolsonaro. The record caseload, along with 2,777 more COVID-19 deaths, comes a day after Brazil surpassed 300,000 fatalities from the pandemic, the world's worst death toll after the United States. Brazil's outbreak has set weekly records due to a patchy vaccine rollout, a lack of national coordination and an infectious new variant.

  • Emmanuel Macron backs EU vaccine export ban

    Emmanuel Macron on Thursday night backed EU export bans on AstraZeneca vaccines to Britain, saying that no company that broke contracts with Brussels should be allowed to ship jabs out of the bloc. Despite the French president’s support, EU leaders refused to jointly back Ursula von der Leyen’s plans for tougher export controls on vaccines on Thursday night amid fears of sparking a vaccine trade war. The European Commission president has introduced legislation giving Brussels the power to impose vaccine export bans on countries with higher vaccination rates than the EU, such as Britain. “It's the end of naivety,” Mr Macron said, “I support export control mechanisms put in place by the European Commission. I support the fact that we must block all exports for as long as some drug companies don't respect their commitments with Europeans”. “Every day, when I read the press across the Channel, they make a case against us saying that it is the EU that is being selfish. This is false!”, Mr Macron, who vowed Europe would become the world's biggest vaccine producer by the summer, said. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the bloc had, "absolutely no desire to disturb the global supply chain" but added the EU "had an interest" in ensuring companies like AstraZeneca respected their contractual obligations. France, Italy and Spain had pushed for the European Council to publicly back the new rules, which would also allow Brussels to block exports to countries that manufacture jabs but do not send them to the EU, like the UK. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Ireland warned against the risk of Britain retaliating by blocking exports of raw materials for vaccines to the EU. Despite the lack of support, the rules are already in force through an “implementing regulation”.

  • ‘Lives lost’ as tornadoes sweep Alabama

    Deaths and property destruction are reported as the powerful storm batters the southern US state.

  • After a massive iceberg broke away from Antarctica, it revealed a long-hidden world of creatures on the seafloor

    When an iceberg the size of LA broke off Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf in February, researchers found life that had been underneath it for decades.

  • U.S. Senate confirms Adeyemo as Yellen's deputy at Treasury

    The U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Wally Adeyemo as deputy secretary of the Treasury on Thursday, making him the first Black American to hold the powerful job. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen welcomed the Senate vote, calling Adeyemo "a master of shuttle economic diplomacy" who would help meld U.S. economic and national security interests. A former senior adviser at asset manager BlackRock Inc and the child of Nigerian immigrants, Adeyemo served as a top national security and economic adviser to Democratic former President Barack Obama and held senior jobs at the Treasury.

  • Massachusetts couple has Audi swiped from dealership after dropping it off for service

    The couple's stolen SUV was found dozens of miles away at a Mercedes-Benz dealership, which had its own report of a stolen vehicle.

  • New Jags signee Shaquill Griffin says team is leaving the past behind

    One of the newest members of the organization said that the team wants to move past previous struggles.

  • US troops had to use their phones as flashlights to try to escape a sinking assault amphibious vehicle that killed 9 of them

    The investigation into what happened to a Marine Corps assault amphibious vehicle last summer is out. It was a disaster.

  • Jennifer Weisselberg said she gave investigators probing Trump's finances '7 boxes of documents' she got in her divorce from the Trump Org CFO's son

    Prosecutors got an early peek at the Trump Organization's finances because of a messy divorce case, a cooperating witness says.

  • An interior designer says the biggest mistake you can make when painting your home is mixing colors

    Interior designer Richard O'Gorman had a spectacular DIY fail when he mixed wall paints, and he spent days fixing it.

  • The Trump Organization controlled employees by giving them houses and paying for their kids’ tuition instead of giving raises, the ex-wife of a key employee says

    The Manhattan District Attorney's Office hired prosecutors with experience looking into how mobs operate to investigator the Trump Organization.

  • 57-year-old New England teacher gives birth to healthy baby boy

    Barbara Higgins, of Concord, is a 57-year-old workout fiend and an elementary school physical education teacher. Her new son, Jack, was born Saturday.

  • Hornets respond to LaMelo Ball wrist injury with a deadline trade with Warriors

    Brad Wanamaker will fill the open roster spot after acquisition from Golden State

  • Fire captain charged in attack on Asian American man outside casino, Arkansas cops say

    “I’m scared now to go out.”

  • Buying a Tesla with bitcoin comes with a lot of opportunities for missteps - and if you accidentally overpay, Tesla won't reimburse you

    Bitcoin transactions are irreversible and the cryptocurrency is prone to massive swings. That makes buying a car with it a complicated process.

  • Exclusive: Novavax delays EU vaccine supply deal amid production problems - source

    Novavax is delaying signing a contract to supply its COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union, an EU official involved in the talks told Reuters, as the U.S. biotech company warned it was struggling to source some raw materials. Prolonging the talks might further complicate the EU's vaccination plans as the bloc had planned to sign a deal early this year for at least 100 million doses of Novavax's vaccine, with an option for another 100 million. Informally, a Novavax executive had said a slow pace in negotiations was warranted because the company was having production problems, the EU official said.

  • A Hollywood actress who married into the royal family says the attention Meghan Markle receives would be her idea of 'complete hell'

    Sophie Winkleman, best known for her role in "Two and a Half Men," told Insider she wouldn't be able to cope with the intrusion Meghan Markle faces.

  • Georgia activists call for Coca-Cola boycott until company condemns GOP voting restrictions

    Activists in Georgia are calling for a statewide boycott of Coca-Cola until the company speaks out against measures moving through the state legislature that would restrict voting access, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.Driving the news: The massive Atlanta-based company said in a statement that it supports a "balanced approach to the elections bills that have been introduced in the Georgia Legislature this session," adding: "The ultimate goal should be fair, secure elections where access to voting is broad-based and inclusive."Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for freeBut activists say the measures moving through Georgia's legislature are all but fair — and roll back expansions to voting access that disproportionately affect people of color. The efforts by Georgia's GOP lawmakers come after the state swung blue for President Biden in 2020 and for Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in 2021.The big picture: The Coca-Cola boycott is part of a broader campaign to pressure Georgia's major businesses to speak out on voting rights. "This past summer, Coke and other corporations said they needed to speak out against racism. But they’ve been mighty quiet about this," organizer Bishop Reginald Jackson told the AJC. Jackson added that if “Coca-Cola wants Black and brown people to drink their product, then they must speak up when our rights, our lives and our very democracy as we know it is under attack.”Like this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free.

  • 11 muscle-building myths that are preventing your from reaching your goals

    One of the biggest muscle-building myths is that you must eat protein after a workout. This and more myths busted by fitness experts.