Washington man to be imprisoned for 5 to 10 years for providing lethal drug
Jimmy Null of Clearfield County said the worst call he ever answered came Aug. 1 of last year when he learned that Sarah Adessa Wilson, whom he thought of as a sister, was dead.
Since then, the finality resonates as a “horrible, hollow feeling” every day, he recounted.
“You, Robert Welsh, were the direct cause of our pain and our suffering,” he told Welsh in a Washington County courtroom Friday morning after spending a week composing his statement.
Robert William Welsh III, 36, of Washington, pleaded guilty to drug delivery resulting in death before Judge Gary Gilman.
Null was one of three Clearfield Countians to address the court. Staring forward without emotion, Welsh rarely made eye contact with Wilson’s friends and family members, who brought with them a portrait of the 28-year-old old, dark-haired victim.
Barbara Miller/Observer-Reporter
Nancy Hess, Wilson’s aunt, asked that Wilson’s photo be placed before the judge.
Deputy District Attorney Jason Walsh offered Welsh 5 to 10 years’ imprisonment, and Welsh had an opportunity to discuss his plea bargain with his attorney, Casey D. White of Pittsburgh, before signing the deal, to which Gilman also agreed.
Null said after the sentencing that the prison sentence imposed on Welsh was “showing that drug dealers are going to be punished for their crimes, not just for us and Sarah’s family, but for everyone who has lost someone as a result of drug dealers.”
Asked if Wilson’s survivors would have preferred a longer sentence, Null replied, “Yes, but at least this is a start.”
The six who attended the proceeding on the victim’s behalf praised Trooper Thomas Kress and the district attorney’s office for pursuing the case and not acting “judgmental” about the circumstances surrounding Wilson’s death. They also said they appreciated being kept informed as the case wended its way through the judicial system.
According to testimony last March at a preliminary hearing, Wilson had been romantically involved for eight months with William Roberson, 37, of Rosebud, Ark., a natural gas pipeline worker she met in Clearfield, and the two had been staying at a Canton Township hotel.
Roberson met Welsh while playing billiards at a Canton bar July 31, 2016. According to testimony, Roberson was seeking marijuana, but Welsh provided him with two stamp bags of heroin that had been laced with fentanyl.
Roberson said he was unfamiliar with the drug, but that Welsh told him to snort it, which Roberson and Wilson did at the hotel. Roberson found Wilson dead the next morning.
“I lost my friend, my rock, my sister,” Null said in court Friday.
“Her parents lost a daughter, her grandparents lost a granddaughter, and her friends lost a friend.”