By Vicky Wedig
SLN staff
A Janesville man was scheduled to appear in court May 30 on charges that he supplied the heroin that caused the overdose death of a man in Elkhorn.
Jason A. Wedell, 34, pleaded not guilty Feb. 21 in Walworth County Circuit Court to first-degree reckless homicide and delivering heroin. A status conference was scheduled for May 30 in the case.
According to the criminal complaint, police were called to Sweetener Supply Corp. in Elkhorn at about 1:45 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6, where an employee, Mathew C. Brown, 42, had collapsed. Brown’s brother, William Brown, also an employee at Sweetener Supply, said he looked for his brother around 1:30 p.m., saw him out back of the business on his knees and slumped over and immediately suspected Mathew Brown had overdosed on drugs, according to the complaint.
Mathew Brown died Jan. 6, and police found 10 packets of heroin in his locker at Sweetener Supply, according to the complaint. An autopsy of Brown conducted Jan. 7 indicated he died of an opiate overdose.
Police spoke with James Brown, another brother of Mathew Brown, who said Brown was a known drug addict and described his dealer. Surveillance video from Sweetener Supply showed a small red car pull into the parking lot at 8:18 a.m. Jan. 6 and a man get out of the car, go to Brown’s car, then get back into his car and leave.
Mathew Brown’s girlfriend, Tammy Bratkovich, said she and Brown had been getting heroin for the past year – on Fridays when Brown gets paid – from “Pud,” later identified as Wedell, who would get money out of Brown’s car, drive to Chicago and then return and give the heroin to Brown, according to the complaint.
Wedell admitted delivering heroin to Brown on Jan. 6 and said Brown usually used two packets of heroin at a time, and Wedell would have sold him 12 packets on Jan. 6, according to the complaint.
