Emboldened New Jersey drug dealer pleads guilty to causing overdose of man in Toms River, NJ

The man responsible for dealing a lethal concoction of drugs that killed a man in Toms River has now pleaded guilty and is looking at several years in prison.

The guilty plea was announced on Tuesday by the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.

An investigation began on December 5, 2019, when Toms River Police Officers responded to a home in the township after getting a call about an unresponsive 24-year-old man within the residence.

When officers arrived on the scene though, they found that he was already dead from an apparent drug overdose.

Toms River Police continued the investigation alongside the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Major Crimes Unit and Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Narcotics Strike Force and the law enforcement units learned that it was 22-year-old Shemar Jackson of Galloway Township, Atlantic County who dealt the deceased an undisclosed amount of heroin and fentanyl the day before he died.

The confirmation of those specific drugs in the deceased's system came via further investigation and laboratory analysis, according to Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer.

Jackson was arrested at his home in Galloway on January 23, 2020, by township police and the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office, brought to the Ocean County Jail, but then released because of the guidelines under New Jersey's Bail Reform Law.

Get our free mobile app

This week, he pled guilty to Strict Liability Drug Induced Death, and Prosecutor Billhimer said that at the time of his sentencing on October 14, "the State will be recommending a term of seven years New Jersey State Prison - subject to the terms of the No Early Release Act." 

Prosecutor Billhimer also said that Ocean County Supervising Assistant Prosecutor Kristin Pressman handled the case on behalf of the State.