Man sentenced to 7 years for giving fentanyl to teenager

A 31-year-old Grafton man was sentenced in Ozaukee County Circuit Court last week to seven years in prison for providing fentanyl to a teenager who was found unconscious in the bathroom of an area McDonald’s restaurant in June.

Jason L. Shelton was also sentenced by Judge Paul Malloy during a Feb. 26 hearing to seven years of extended supervision following his incarceration.

Shelton pleaded guilty in December to felony counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, distributing narcotic drugs to a minor and possession of narcotics, as well as a misdemeanor charge of failure to provide aid or report the incident.

According to a criminal complaint, police officers who were called to the McDonald’s on Falls Road in Grafton the night of Saturday, June 10, found a 16-year-old boy who did not have a pulse in a bathroom.

The officers administered CPR until emergency medical workers arrived and took over. The teenager regained a pulse and survived.

One witness said the teenager, who is diabetic, had a history of drug use but never overdosed.

A woman who identified herself as the teen’s girlfriend said he had been doing whippets, or inhalant drugs, that day, smokes marijuana and has experimented with harder drugs in the past.

Another witness told authorities that he saw the teenager go into the restaurant bathroom with a man later identified as Shelton about 20 minutes before the medical emergency.

The witness said he returned to the restaurant to pick the teenager up and saw Shelton running out of the bathroom and the teen unconscious on the floor of a stall.

The teenager told police that Shelton told him he had some “dope,” and at about 10:50 p.m. the two of them went into a bathroom stall where Shelton pulled out a syringe and a blackish, rock-like substance. He said Shelton mixed a little bit of the substance with water in a spoon, then collected the mixture with the syringe.

The teenager said that the last thing he remembered was telling Shelton that he could inject the syringe into his hand.

Several items were found scattered around the unconscious teenager, and one of them was a blackish substance that tested positive for fentanyl, the complaint states.

Shelton’s family members gave authorities permission to search their home, where Shelton had been sleeping in the living room.

Officers found baggies containing two types of pills, a grayish, rock-like substance that tested positive for fentanyl, marijuana and two syringes.

Shelton was free at the time in lieu of a $5,000 signature bond in connection with his April 30, 2023, arrest on charges of second and subsequent-offense possession of marijuana, a felony, and a misdemeanor count of possession of drug paraphernalia.

Those charges were filed after Shelton’s mother called police to report that her son, who had been kicked out of the house and was sleeping in his vehicle in the back yard, was using drugs.

An officer who responded to the home at 7:19 p.m. reported that when he opened the door to Shelton’s vehicle he smelled marijuana. Shelton said he smoked the drug at about 2:30 p.m., then took a nap, according to a complaint filed in that case.

Shelton said the officer would find marijuana in a cigarette pack inside the vehicle. In addition, the officer found more marijuana and two smoking pipes in a shopping bag in the vehicle. Narcan, a medication used to reverse the effects of opioid overdose, was found on the passenger side floorboard, along with a syringe.

Shelton pleaded guilty to the marijuana charge in December and was sentenced last week to five days in the county jail. The possession of drug paraphernalia charge was dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

When sentencing Shelton for his June 10 crimes, Malloy made him eligible for the earned release program after serving five years of his sentence. That program gives people with substance abuse issues who are convicted of non-violent offenses the opportunity to shorten their prison sentences by participating in treatment.