Charges held in fatal overdose case
Observer-Reporter
A Washington County sheriff’s deputy escorts Nicholas Retos to his preliminary hearing in this March 2019 photo.
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Washington County sheriff’s deputies escort Nicholas G. Retos into the Washington County Courthouse for his preliminary hearing in March.
Amara Czech said she injected heroin and fell out of consciousness and later regained it to find her boyfriend, Justin Platt, dead or dying of an overdose in the bedroom of his Washington apartment last month.
“He was black and blue,” Czech recalled Friday. “I ran up to him and he had puke all down the side of him.”
Czech was testifying during a preliminary hearing as part of the case against 34-year-old Nicholas G. Retos of East Washington. Retos is charged with providing Platt, 31, with stamp bags containing fentanyl that killed him at his apartment Feb. 2.
District Judge Robert Redlinger held drug delivery resulting in death and other charges for trial in the Washington County Court of Common Pleas during the hearing, which lasted more than two hours.
Redlinger left in place another district judge’s decision to deny Retos bond. Court records cite the “nature of crime and flight risk” as reasons for the denial.
Investigators from the county drug task force filed a number of other drug charges against Retos when he was arrested March 4. Some stem from a heroin purchase that Czech allegedly made from Retos using money from investigators Feb. 27, when detectives followed her in an unmarked car.
Czech said Platt had gone through a rehab program in the fall, but relapsed the day before his death. They spent that day smoking crack cocaine they’d bought from someone other than Retos.
The morning of Platt’s death, they contacted Retos by phone before going to get “bags” – which she clarified meant stamp bags of heroin – from him at a house she described as belonging to someone she couldn’t identify by full name.
Inside the kitchen, Czech recalled, Platt gave Retos $60. She said Retos got a phone call and went outside. He returned and handed Platt six stamp bags.
Under cross examination by Komron Maknoon, Retos’ attorney, Czech said she remembered Retos keeping some bags he’d just bought for himself in addition to those he gave Platt.
Maknoon suggested Retos, a fellow user, was sharing drugs with his friend Platt rather than dealing them.
“They call and they ask, he has to find it for them,” he said following the hearing.
The defense attorney also elicited testimony from Czech that her boyfriend was a steroid user.
Back at the apartment, Czech said she stood at the dining room table and injected a stamp bag and a half of what the couple had gotten from Retos. Her boyfriend, who was going to snort his share, asked for a bill. She said she handed him a $1 bill, but he asked for a $20 bill instead.
She recalled giving one to him. She said she knelt on the floor.
“That’s the last thing I remember,” she added.
She woke up to find Platt lying in the bedroom. She used his phone to call 911 when she couldn’t find her own.
County Coroner Tim Warco testified the cause of Platt’s death was combined toxicity from cocaine and fentanyl.
Maknoon asked Warco a number of questions about the drugs found in Platt’s system. Warco said he couldn’t answer some of them – including what dose of fentanyl would have been lethal – because he wasn’t a toxicologist.
Maknoon said the hearing “leaves a lot of questions.”
“And the question that’s raised is on the science, and we’re going to address that through experts before the trial,” he added.
Czech, who isn’t charged in the case, admitted she initially told police she’d come to the apartment and found her boyfriend. She subsequently changed her story, giving the account she said was the true version of events and cooperating with investigators in the “controlled buy” late in the month.
Police took Retos into custody after he’d gotten out of Czech’s car following a conversation in which Retos – apparently worried she was working with police and wearing a listening device – sat in her car and communicated with her through handwritten notes. He allegedly asked her to blame someone else for providing the drugs believed to have killed Platt.
Czech said she didn’t expect anything from the government for her help.
“Why are you testifying?” Assistant District Attorney Rachel Wheeler asked her.
“I just wanted justice for Justin,” Czech answered.