MONROE — Two Illinois men are charged with homicide for the drug overdose death of a 33-year-old Monroe man.
Keith Eric Kamholz, 50, Warren, was arrested Nov. 27 and remains jailed on a $30,000 cash bond.
An arrest warrant is out for his co-defendant, 44-year-old Rico K. Ware of Rockford.
Both men are charged in Green County Circuit Court with first-degree reckless homicide by the delivery of drugs, a Class C felony punishable by up to 40 years in the state prison system.
Kamholz also faces felony charges of possessing narcotics with intent to deliver and possessing cocaine and THC, plus a misdemeanor charge of possessing drug paraphernalia, all as a repeat offender.
Kamholz is due back in court Dec. 10 for a preliminary hearing.
According to criminal complaints filed Dec. 1 and Dec. 2:
The victim in the case died alone at his home in Monroe in late November after apparently injecting himself with an opioid.
Kamholz regularly facilitated getting heroin for the man who overdosed by either driving him to a dealer in Rockford in exchange for $40, or bringing the drug to him.
Kamholz identified Ware, known on the street as “Fatty,” as the dealer in Rockford who sold it. Phone records show frequent calls between Kamholz and a number associated with Ware.
Police found Kamholz using the deceased man’s cell phone to arrange a Nov. 27 meetup in Browntown as a sting operation. A search of Kamholz’s Chrysler minivan located cocaine, crack pipes, a THC vape pipe and a baggie of purported heroin.
Kamholz told police he does not use heroin but he has been addicted to crack cocaine for 20 years. He said he helped the deceased man get heroin because the extra $40 he earned “would go a long ways when you are poor.”
A forensic test of the purported heroin from Kamholz’s minivan identified only cutting agents like lactose, “which is common when dealing with fentanyl,” a Monroe Police Department detective noted.
“This occurs when there isn’t much if any heroin in the substance,” the detective explained. In fact, it is typically “a miniscule amount of fentanyl with a large amount of cutting agents due to the fentanyl’s potency.”
Pharmaceutical fentanyl is a synthetic opioid pain reliever approved for treating severe pain during surgeries and in advanced cancer patients, however it is 80 to 100 times more potent than heroin. The Drug Enforcement Administration attributes many overdose deaths to fentanyl that users believe is heroin.
The doctor who performed an autopsy of the deceased man identified the cause of death as a drug overdose, possibly a fentanyl overdose, however specific toxicology results were not included in the criminal complaint.
It was not the man’s first overdose. Days before his death, according to the criminal complaint, he overdosed in Kamholz’s vehicle.
Kamholz referenced the overdose in a text message to the man, which police later read and documented in the criminal complaint.
“That was very scary for me today,” Kamholz wrote. “I brought you back to life I beat on you an yelled your name you had no pulse thats when I started to beating your chest all the way to the hospital.”