NORTH HAVERHILL — On a warm and muggy morning last July, a small gathering of family and friends met in a cemetery behind a line of trees off Route 4 in Quechee to remember and mourn the loss of Leara King, a Hartford High School junior who had died six months earlier of a drug overdose at her father’s home on North Main Street in West Lebanon.
Well into the second year of a global pandemic that wrecked school and normal activities among teens everywhere, a lifelong friend of Leara’s mother who had traveled from Connecticut to attend the service that morning couldn’t help seeing Leara’s death as tragedy rooted in the isolation imposed by quarantines, lockdowns and classes on Zoom.
“Not having socialization, what else do you expect to happen to our kids?” said Monica Messenger, a health care administrator who grew up next door to Leara’s mother, Penny Seaver, in Enfield, Conn.
Her eyes were watering as she thought of Seaver’s daughter, whom she had known since she was a baby.
“There is nowhere for them to go to, no one for them to tall talk to, everything got canceled. … What’s even the reason to get up?” she asked.
Six months later from that July day and nearly a year after her death, on a sub-freezing December morning in a North Haverhill courtroom, those questions still gnawed at Leara King’s family, even as they witnessed a measure of justice in her case.
Mya Blanchard, 22, and Hakeem Harris, 24, were separately sentenced to serve three to seven years in state prison, minus time served since their incarceration last year, in back-to-back 20-minute hearings before Grafton County Superior Court Judge Peter Bornstein.
Handcuffed and dressed in orange prison uniforms, neither Blanchard nor Harris offered statements to the court beyond the perfunctory “yes” and “no” answers to the judge’s pro-forma questions, other than their respective attorneys saying their clients were taking responsibility for their crimes.
Leara’s family said the sentences were not ideal, but they were willing to accept them as a step toward accountability in the opioid epidemic that is leaving no community, even small towns in New Hampshire and Vermont, untouched.
“I’ll never think the sentence is fair. How do you bring back (Leara’s) life?” said Bill King, Leara’s father, outside the courtroom following Blanchard’s and Harris’ plea and sentencing hearing on Tuesday morning, who said they had been consulted by the prosecutors and consented to the terms of the plea agreement.
“They pleaded guilty. They’ll serve their time, They are being held accountable and hopefully something will come of it,” he said.
The Valley News typically does not reveal the identities of minors who are victims of crimes and previously identified Blanchard’s and Harris’ victim as an “Upper Valley teenager,” but on Tuesday parents Bill King and Penny Seaver gave the Valley News permission to identify her by name.
Blanchard, who sold to Leara the fentanyl that killed her, pleaded guilty to selling a controlled substance and selling a controlled drug with death resulting. Harris, described by prosecutors as Blanchard’s boyfriend, pleaded guilty to charges of selling a controlled drug.
A third defendant, Darryl Strong, 42, formerly of White River Junction and from whom Blanchard and Harris purchased the fentanyl that was sold to Harris, pleaded guilty in July to selling fentanyl and is now serving a sentence of 3½ to seven years in prison.
Much of the state’s case against Blanchard and Harris is sealed because it involves a minor, but Grafton County prosecutor Tara Heater in court for the first time sketched out a narrative of the events that immediately preceded Leara’s death on Dec. 30, 2021.
According to Heater, Lebanon police responded at 8:40 a.m. to a medical call at Bill King’s home on North Main Street in West Lebanon, where he had reported that he had discovered his daughter in bed and unconscious that morning and had attempted to administer CPR.
Emergency personnel administered Narcan and oxygen because Leara was not breathing on her own, Heater said, and they transported her to the pediatric intensive care unit at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, where her death two days later was ascribed to “acute fentanyl poisoning.”
Investigators found evidence of drug use in Leara’s room and an examination of phone text messages showed that she had been in communication with Blanchard and Harris during the evening hours prior to her overdose, according to Heater. Leara had reached out to the couple, from who she had bought drugs previously, because another source had fallen through.
“Harris and Blanchard told (Leara) that they would help her find someone to sell her drugs” and asked for “five bags” in exchange for transporting Leara to their dealer, Heather told the court. The couple then picked up Leara at her father’s house and they drove to another address in West Lebanon where Darryl Strong, the supplier, resided.
Strong sold seven bags of fentanyl for $70 to Blanchard, who then passed on two of the bags to Leara, Heater related. The three then drove to another address in White River Junction before bringing Leara back to her father’s in West Lebanon at around 3 a.m., where she was found unconscious in her bed later that morning.
In addition to their prison sentences, Blanchard is ordered to pay $3,566 in restitution, and Harris is ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution, to Bill King, Leara’s father. Blanchard and Harris are also ordered to undergo an assessment for substance abuse treatment and, if they successfully complete a treatment program, are eligible to have one year of suspended on the their minimal sentence.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
