Christine James
November 25, 2016

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September 10, 2016

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We know addiction is a disease. People don’t ask to be addicts, and they can be treated. But when you combine addiction with stupidity, cruelty and indifference to the life of your own infant daughter, you have crossed a line. You deserve neither sympathy nor leniency, but rather disdain and, at most, pity.

Ryan Barry, 33, and his wife, Ashley Cyr, 29, are heroin addicts. They are clean now because they have been in jail for a couple of years. And they will be clean for at least several years to come after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the death of their baby girl, Mya, from the heroin they used and kept in an apartment they shared in Marshfield.

It was on Sept. 23, 2011, that first responders and police arrived at that apartment and found Mya cold and dead. Police found heroin and hypodermic needles in the bedroom where Mya slept with her mother and father. According to investigators, heroin had been mixed with baby formula in the bottle from which Mya had been fed that morning.

It took two years before laboratory analysis and police work produced enough evidence to indict Barry and Cyr for manslaughter in 2013. Both parents were held on $200,000 bail until their scheduled trials this week in Superior Court in Plymouth. Barry pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday and was sentenced to 10-to-12 years in prison. Cyr got 6-to-8 years for manslaughter the following day.

Marshfield Police Chief Phil Tavares, a captain at the time, was among the officers who went to the apartment in the Castle Green complex the day Mya died. “It was extremely upsetting,” Tavares said. “It’s a terrible tragedy for this child to never have been given a fair chance.”

Christine James
August 22, 2016

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Christine James
May 18, 2016

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The Sunday Enterprise, June 7, 2015

   We applaud District Attorney Tim Cruz for responding swiftly and comprehensively to a recent explosion of violent crime in the city of Brockton.

   On Thursday, Cruz announced he restarted "Operation Safe Streets," a coalition of federal, state, regional and local law enforcement agencies that will work collaboratively to find solutions to the wave of free-for-all shootings and other violent crimes plaguing Brockton's neighborhoods.  It is exactly what we asked Mayor Bill Carpenter to do in our May 29 editorial, "Brockton mayor, police need new crime fighting strategy."

MONDAY, MAY 11, 2015
BY HERALD STAFF

IN Plymouth County the district attorney is throwing the book at a suspected drug dealer who allegedly sold heroin to a young mom who then overdosed and died, while in Gloucester police have announced a soft approach to handling addicts who want help with treatment.

Where some might see a conflict in two law enforcement philosophies, we see a kitchen-sink approach to tackling the state’s growing opiate addiction problem – and welcome them both.

“Substance abuse issues are haunting our neighborhoods,” Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz told the Herald last week. “We need to fight this problem on all levels in order to send a strong message and take back our communities.”

That includes, yes, charging the dealer who allegedly sold 25-year-old Paige Lopes of Wareham $80 worth of heroin that killed her, Cruz said. Lopes’ family said she struggled with addiction but had been sober for 90 days prior to the overdose.

Victim’s family praises dealer charge

050515, BROCKTON, – PAIGE LOPES, IN AN UNDATED FAMILY PHOTO.
PHOTO COURTESY JESSICA DIO

THE BOSTON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015

by: Colneth Smiley, Jr.

The manslaughter charges against an accused drug dealer in a Wareham mother’s overdose death is a new direction in the state’s battle against opioid addiction and could serve as a deterrent to other offenders, the woman’s family and Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz said.

“If you’re a heroin dealer, it’s likely you had a client that died from an overdose.  If you get arrested selling heroin then, yes, you should automatically be charged with manslaughter,” said Benjamin Dio, brother-in-law of Paige Lopes, 25, who was found dead Feb. 21 of a heroin overdose.

Steven D. Foss, 33, of Wareham is accused of selling Lopes, 25, of Wareham, $80 worth of heroin, which she ingested, according to prosecutors.