The last conspirator in a 16-member Centreville, Va.-based heroin dealing ring that left four teens dead was found guilty Tuesday by a jury in Alexandria’s federal court.
The other 15 members pleaded guilty, but 20-year-old Skylar Schnippel chose to go to trial for selling the heroin to his 19-year-old girlfriend Alicia Lannes that killed her in March 2008. According to prosecutors, Schnippel knew Lannes had overdosed in the past when he sold her the drugs.
Two of the other conspirators have already been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the minimum under federal law for dealing drugs when it results in death. Schnippel likely will get more time.
Defendants who plead guilty often get softer sentences, and he also faces 10 additional years after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. The heroin dealing conspiracy started in the summer of 2007, with some members making runs to the District to purchase drugs they later distributed at Westfield High School. Schnippel also recruited his fellow students at Virginia Commonwealth University to buy the heroin from the ring, court documents said.
The scheme was cracked as students at the high school started to overdose and turned over their suppliers. Other lower-level buyers also became government informants and turned in details on the dealers.
Schnippel himself also started providing information to detectives soon after he was seen leaving the home of co-conspirator David Schreider. The charging documents — filed in the case in November, when the FBI announced the outcome of its “Operation Smackdown” — noted several statements made by Schnippel to investigators regarding his role and the roles of others in the scheme.
“Today’s conviction should be a warning to other young people dealing deadly drugs,” Dana J. Boente, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement. “If any of these youth from Centreville had stopped to consider the consequences of their actions, this death may have been prevented.”
