Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - Felony arrest warrants were issued July 19 for a pair of area men charged with the unlawful possession of a controlled drug with the intent to distribute.
Larry Deslaurier, 20, of Sallisaw and Jonathan Paul Barnes, 35, of Muskogee each face up to five years in the Department of Corrections and fines of up to $20,000. Their bonds were set at $20,000 each.
On April 28, 2020, Sallisaw police learned of a fatal drug overdose at Motel 6 involving a 17-year-old girl. At the scene, police took a statement from Deslaurier, the girl's boyfriend. He said he had been dating her off and on for about two years. When asked what happened in the motel room before she was found dead, Deslaurier said Luke Hiser had come to the room to give him a tattoo. He said they all started partying the night before his girlfriend got sick. Deslaurier said Heath Looper and Lucy Gutierrez brought methamphetamine and a pipe to the room.
Everyone was smoking and they all did a “line,” Deslaurier said, even his girlfriend, and he said she told him she was feeling good and seemed really happy, but later that night she started having problems.
She began to have trouble walking, then was unable to talk. When asked what he meant by that, Deslaurier said she was saying words, but they were unintelligible. Her legs would not work, Deslaurier said, and she said the back of her neck was hurting. Deslaurier said he put her back in bed, and they finally went to sleep, but when he woke up, she was not breathing.
Photos taken at the scene showed an empty bag in the motel room's toilet bowl. When asked who threw it in there, Deslaurier admitted he did it when his girlfriend began getting sick. He said meth had been in the bag. He also stated that he bought the bag from Looper.
Deslaurier said the reason he didn't call an ambulance when the girl got sick was because he did not want her mother knowing. The officer's report on the interview states that Deslaurier did not appear to be upset or remorseful about the death of his girlfriend of two years.
In another interview room, officers spoke with Looper, who said he sold a bag of meth to Deslaurier for $40. Looper further stated that he bought the meth from Barnes, who was staying in Room 214 at the Motel 6.
Hiser and Gutierrez told officers they saw the 17-year-old girl smoking meth and snorting lines of the drug from the bathroom counter. When asked why he didn't call for help, Hiser told police he didn't think it was his place. He instead decided to take a shower and leave the room.
In a May 4, 2020, interview, Deslaurier admitted that his girlfriend was screaming and moaning as she was dying. He was asked again why he didn't call 911. He again said he was scared of her mother and admitted it was because there were drugs in the room. He said he asked Hiser and Looper what to do and they advised him to just let the girl take a nap.
A woman who was staying in a nearby room at the Motel 6 told officers she was cooking breakfast at 9 a.m. the day the teen died and she could hear screaming coming from the Deslaurier room. She said the screaming lasted about two hours, and then she left the room. She said she feels terrible and should have called 911 that day, because she knew something was wrong.
All of the witnesses and occupants in the motel room said the teen was in extreme pain on the morning of her death and she lay there until she died. No one called an ambulance for her until 7 p.m. that day.
Laura Brown, KXMX Staff Writer
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