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A Riverhead man who admitted selling fentanyl-laced cocaine that killed four people on the North Fork and Shelter Island on the same day in 2021 was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison yesterday as some of the anguished victims’ families called for a tougher punishment. Nicole Fuller reports in NEWSDAY that Marquis Douglas, 39, pleaded guilty last year in connection with the opioid deaths of Swainson Brown, of Shelter Island; Matthew LaPiana, of East Marion; Seth Tramontana, of Greenport, and Navid Ahmadzadeh, of Southold — all of whom died after consuming a fentanyl analog on Aug. 13, 2021.
"It's an outrage that so many people in our small town of Greenport had to die," said Patricia LaPiana, the mother of Matthew LaPiana, as she addressed the Central Islip courtroom Tuesday.
She described how her husband found their son "lifeless and cold" in his bed and was "unable to revive him."
Tears fell as she and other family members spoke, remembering their loved ones.
U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert sentenced Douglas to 25 years in prison and 5 years of supervised release — a term recommended by the prosecution and defense as part of a plea agreement.
The judge added: "He might be out in 20 years with good behavior."
Prosecutors said the four victims died after ingesting cocaine laced with a fentanyl analog that had been distributed by Douglas and ultimately sold to the victims by a street-level dealer in Greenport. When Douglas was arrested in May 2022, he had 105 grams of fentanyl and 135 grams of cocaine.
Beverly Samuels, the mother of Brown, said she was "really disappointed" Douglas' sentence wasn't longer. She thought Douglas would receive 25 years for each victim, she said.
"There's so much hurt and anger," Samuels, 62, said. "Four people died, four young people. I have to go to the grave all the time to talk to my son."
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Strong’s Marine has submitted a revised site plan for its proposed yacht storage buildings on Mattituck Inlet, scaling back the proposal to one 65,100-square-foot building designed to accommodate 56 yachts. Beth Young in EAST END BEACON reports that the applicants say the project will also reduce the amount of sand removed from the site by 48 percent. The original proposal, first submitted in 2018, called for two roughly 50,000-square-foot buildings that would accommodate 88 yachts averaging 60 feet in length. It would also have called for the removal of 135,000 cubic yards of sand from the site.
The project’s scale has galvanized environmentalists on the North Fork for half a dozen years. The Southold Town Planning Board had tabled a resolution denying the project, and a findings statement that highlighted numerous environmental impacts that could not be mitigated, at its July 8 meeting, in anticipation of receiving the revised site plan. The Southold Town Planning Board, which originally adjourned voting on a denial resolution to its Aug. 5 meeting in anticipation of the new plan, could now direct the applicant to prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the project, as Southold Town Planning Director Heather Lanza told the Suffolk County Planning Commission at its June 20 meeting disapproving the application. Ms. Lanza said yesterday that the Planning Department will likely have more information on the Planning Board’s course of action by the middle of next week.
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As the southern pine beetle continues to infest and kill pine trees in East Hampton Town, a new vector is now killing beech trees, albeit more slowly and on a smaller scale. Christopher Walsh reports on 27east.com that Mark Abramson, the assistant environmental protection director in the town’s Natural Resources Department, and Andy Drake, a senior environmental analyst in the Land Acquisition and Management Department, told the Town Board last week that areas of East Hampton and Amagansett, where the highest density of beech trees is found, as well as in Montauk, are seeing “a majority of all the beech trees” affected. A nematode subspecies called Litylenchus crenatae mccannii, or Lcm, is believed to be the cause, affecting leaves and eventually killing the trees “because they cannot photosynthesize and get nutrients,” Abramson said. Lcm invades beech tree buds from June to October, when they feed and overwinter. They are likely to be dispersed by birds and insects. Infected leaves will display dark veins and may curl and turn brown. In severe cases, buds are killed, and no new leaves or shoots are produced. Beech leaf disease is mostly found on East Hampton Town’s nature preserve properties, Drake said, where it is affecting most of the European and American beech trees. This, he said, “is the first instance anywhere where a nematode is causing tree mortality. So for that reason, there’s not a lot known about this.” Studies are underway, he said, “but there’s not enough data at this time to really know what a successful treatment or management might look like. … Unfortunately, large-scale management of our public lands is probably not yet feasible for that same reason — we just don’t know enough about it.” Beech leaf disease, Drake said, is killing around 90 percent of affected trees. But at smaller stands, trees may be saved or their lives prolonged through management.
