Jury Returns Guilty Verdict in Teen’s Overdose Death Case
December 20, 2024
District Attorney Collin Sims reports that on December 20, 2024, a St. Tammany Parish jury deliberated for slightly more than one hour before finding 43-year-old Felisia Grantham of Bush guilty of second degree murder and distribution of a narcotic drug to a person under age eighteen. The charges result from the 2022 Fentanyl overdose death of a 15-year-old Covington girl. Assistant District Attorneys Iain Dover and Gary Tromblay presented the case to the jury. Judge Tara Zeller presided over the four-day trial. Detective Matthew Morrison with the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Office spearheaded the investigation.
According to trial testimony, during the evening hours of July 12, 2022, sheriff’s deputies and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) were dispatched to the defendant’s Bush residence in response to a 911 call reporting an unresponsive female at the home. Upon arrival, responding personnel observed a 15-year-old girl lying on her back on a bedroom floor, exhibiting no signs of life. Attempts to resuscitate the young girl were unsuccessful. While tending to the victim, deputies noted the presence of illicit drugs and drug-related paraphernalia in the bedroom. Suspecting the girl’s death may have resulted from foul play, a criminal investigation was initiated.
Detectives ascertained that the defendant and a 17-year-old girl were the only other individuals present in the house when the victim was first found unresponsive. Both were transported to the sheriff department’s Bush substation for questioning. During her interview, Grantham stated she picked up the victim, who was her cousin, earlier that day so the victim could spend the night at the defendant’s residence. She said the victim was feeling ill and had thrown up. Once they arrived at the house, the victim retired to one of the bedrooms. Grantham said she later checked on the victim and found she wasn’t breathing.
Detectives seized the drugs and paraphernalia found in the bedroom. Laboratory analysis of the recovered pills indicated they contained Fentanyl, a powerful opioid drug commonly abused, often with deadly consequences. Detectives also seized several electronic devices from the defendant’s residence, one of them being the defendant’s cellular phone. An autopsy was performed on the victim and the toxicology results indicated the victim’s body contained 13 times the amount of Fentanyl needed to kill a human.
Data obtained from the defendant’s phone revealed a series of text messages between the defendant and the victim occurring the day of the victim’s death. The conversation was initiated by the defendant and the essence of the conversation was the defendant offering to obtain Fentanyl for the victim in exchange for the victim sharing some of it with her. Detectives learned the victim had recently been placed into foster care after experiencing horrific abuse at the hands of a family acquaintance. The abuse had caused the victim to experience severe depression, leading her to become involved in illicit drug use. Despite her personal struggles, the victim maintained a job at a local fast-food establishment. The defendant, on the other hand, was unemployed. The text message conversation showed the defendant exploiting the victim in order to obtain drugs for herself financed by the victim. The defendant’s cellphone also revealed that once she concluded her text message conversation with the victim, she then initiated a text message conversation with a known drug dealer from Covington. During that conversation, arrangements were made to obtain Fentanyl.
With this cellphone information in hand, detectives conducted a second interview of Grantham. Initially, Grantham continued to deny any knowledge of drug use being involved in the victim’s death. Detectives then confronted Grantham with the data recovered from her cellphone. Grantham eventually admitted her involvement in obtaining the Fentanyl that was determined to have caused the death of the victim.
A total of thirteen witnesses were called to testify during the four-day trial. At the conclusion of the taking of testimony, attorneys for both the state and defense made their closing arguments to the jury. During the state’s initial closing argument, ADA Tromblay reminded the jury that Grantham was very familiar with the hard life the 15-year-old victim had experienced and that Grantham “leveraged that to her advantage” in order to score the drugs she needed to get the high she sought. Tromblay said Grantham “played Russian roulette with the life of a 15-year-old.” In his closing argument, defense counsel argued the defendant did not intend to contribute to the death of the victim and it would be unjust to send her to prison for the rest of her life “over a text message.” In the state’s rebuttal closing argument, ADA Dover stated the defendant’s text messages were the “beginning, middle and end” of the victim’s death. Dover said the critical issue, according to the law, was not whether the defendant intended to kill the victim but rather whether she intended to aid and abet in the distribution of the drugs that ultimately caused the victim’s death. Dover described Grantham as being evil. He pointed out she had not shed a single tear during the trial, that she knew exactly what she was doing and was indifferent about the result.
Following the guilty verdict, District Attorney Collin Sims stated “Drug dealers and their accomplices should be on notice, that if you want to run the risk and sell your poison to our kids, be prepared to be charged with murder.”
Judge Zeller has set Grantham’s sentencing for February 24, 2025. Second degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.