Couple who sold fatal drugs to Vermilion man in 2022 get 30 months each in prison

ELYRIA — Three years after Justin Cramer's death, Tyler Fox and Abigail Link are going to prison for up to 2½ years for selling him the drugs that killed him in May 2022. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge Giovanna Bremke on Friday sentenced the couple to 30 months in prison each. Under the law, both are eligible for early release. Fox and Link, both 25, pleaded guilty in May to one count each of reckless homicide and trafficking in a fentanyl-related compound, all felonies. A trial had been scheduled June 4. Cramer, 22, was a new father who had just gotten out of drug rehab when he bought drugs from Link and Fox in May 2022. He used the drugs and died of a fentanyl overdose, according to Vermilion police and the Lorain County Coroner's Office. Charges including involuntary manslaughter, corrupting another with drugs and trafficking in fentanyl brought after an investigation by Vermilion police, the DEA and county Prosecutor's Office, were reduced as part of a plea agreement. Bremke also denied the couple's request to report to jail at a later date so they could attend funeral services for Link's grandmother, who died in the last week. In court, Fox and Link said Cramer was a good friend, and both apologized for his death. "I'd like to say that I'm sorry to everyone involved," Fox said, fighting back tears. "I didn't mean for it to happen." Link said she was "sorry to both my family and his family." Defense attorney Aaron Schwartz, who represented Link, called it "one of the sadder types of cases" to come before the court. "It could have just as easily been her (Link) to pass away" from an unintended "but foreseeable consequence" of drug use, he said. Link, who has struggled with sobriety for years, Schwartz said, has "tremendous remorse for the victim in this case." Defense attorney Jen Berki, who represented Fox, said her client "knows the gravity of the situation." "He feels awful," she told Bremke, having sold Cramer the fatal drugs only to fuel his own heroin addiction. "He didn't intend for this to happen." Assistant Prosecutor Brian James agreed that Fox and Link didn't mean to kill Cramer, but they should have known "drugs are killing people every day in our community." He and his office asked the judge for a prison sentence, "based on the damage they caused by their actions." James also read a victim impact letter from Justin Cramer's grandfather, Kenneth Cramer, in which the older man said his grandson was a beloved companion who bonded with him over music and helped out Kenneth Cramer with household chores following the death of his wife. Kenneth Cramer said his grandson lived with him several times over the years. The past three years without him were "challenging," Kenneth Cramer wrote. The maximum sentence would bring "some solace," he wrote, but "nothing can or will change this past three years." Chief Assistant Prosecutor Chris Pierre said instead of the term "addict," some people prefer terms like a person "struggling," "waging war" with or "battling" addiction. "The thing about battles is, they come with collateral damage," he told Bremke, and certain lifestyles like the transient one Fox and Link lived — unemployed, moving from hotel to hotel trying to find enough money to feed their addictions — "led to these consequences." He said the court should separate Fox and Link by sending them to prison where they can be monitored, get help for their addictions and be freed from a pattern that isn't leading them to anything good. Otherwise, "it doesn't feel like there are any steps forward," he said. Fox and Link had been free on bond prior to sentencing until Bremke recently revoked it. She did that after the couple were arrested June 17 by Vermilion police on felony burglary charges. The status of those charges was in dispute Friday. Vermilion Police Sgt. Scott Holmes told Bremke the Erie County Prosecutor's Office was considering taking the case to a grand jury. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com.