In early November three years ago Brian Oshea pleaded guilty to a count of cocaine possession and was sentenced to nine months at the county jail, with credit for the months he’d already served. He was released on Feb. 8, 2022, at 11 a.m.
Five hours later, he was dead of an overdose.
The county jail has developed a reputation over the years for keeping inmates clean of drugs and giving them opportunities to reform. At times when sober inmates leave the facility and relapse, using drugs as if they’d never stopped and their body wasn’t clean, their relapse can be a deadly shock to the system. Overdoses are not uncommon.
Oshea after his release had returned to the house he shared with Brian Pirraglia at 17 Blasdell Court in Palm Coast’s Woodlands, “a known narcotics residence,” according to an arrest report. It’s where Oshea had been living before his incarceration.
On June 14, Pirraglia was indicted by a Flagler County grand jury on a first degree murder charge in the death of Oshea, the man he called his friend.
Oshea was seizing when sheriff’s deputies and paramedics arrived at the Blasdell Court house that afternoon, after Pirraglia had called 911 and performed CPR on his friend until help arrived. Paramedics took Oshea to AdventHealth Palm Coast, where he was pronounced deceased at 4:06 p.m. Brian Oshea was 39.
Authorities knew immediately it was an overdose as they reconstructed what led to his death.
After his release from jail, Oshea and Pirraglia listened to music for a couple of hours at the house then went to Publix to pick up lunch with Pirraglia’s boss, who then took them to a job site on State Road A1A. The weather turned bad, so the boss drove them back to the Blasdell Court house.
Pirraglia told authorities that around 3 p.m., Oshea left the house for 15 minutes and returned with what appeared to be a scratch on his forehead. In Pirraglia’s account to authorities, he told Pirraglia that he’d fallen and was not feeling right. He started seizing. So Pirraglia called 911.
Pirraglia and Oshea weren;t alone in the house. A woman who was living there told authorities a different story: Pirraglia and Oshea had gone into a bedroom for 20 to 30 minutes before Pirraglia knocked on her door to ask for Narcan, the neutralizing agent that can at times reverse the effects of an overdose.
When authorities were at the house at the time, Pirraglia refused them entry into that bedroom. Detectives obtained a search warrant. Complicating matters: Brittni Pozza, a state prison escapee, was hiding in the room. (She was later located down the street and returned to prison that March, where she completed her sentence.) Once in the room, detectives found needles, bloodied paper towels, and a spoon with liquid in it, all consistent with drug use.
In a second interview with detectives, Pirraglia conceded that there’d been drug use, and that Oshea had nodded off after injecting himself, hitting and injuring his head against furniture. “I’m guessing he got ahold of some fentanyl,” Pirraglia told detectives–fentanyl Pirraglia had bought two days before in Daytona Beach. He told the detectives where he’d left the fentanyl–in that spoon–and that he’d allegedly forgotten it was there.
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s lab tested the liquid and confirmed it to be fentanyl. In a third interview with detectives, on July 14, 2022, Pirraglia said of the fentanyl in the spoon: “I didn’t get a chance to do it; maybe it was a Godsend. Maybe, God forbid, rest his soul, he took my place, but if I would have done that, maybe I would have been dead, you know what I am saying.”
He admitted that the fentanyl belonged to him, according to his arrest report–and to harboring and concealing Pozza, the fugitive. He was charged with felony drug possession and harboring a fugitive, and eventually pleaded to all three counts. He was sentenced to a year in jail, with credit for five months he’d already served. He was rearrested on an out-of-county warrant in March, and was at the county jail when authorities served him the warrant for the first-degree murder charge.
The investigation was led by the Sheriff’s Office’s Major Case Unit’s Detective Adam Gossett, who, along the way, obtained arrest warrants on several related offenders. “Years ago, I directed that all overdose deaths be investigated as a murder,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “If you are a drug dealer and sell a fatal dose of poison in Flagler County, even if it takes two years, we are going to get you.”
Atwp says
Sad.
The Geode says
I still think these charges are BULLSHIT. I also think a person has the right to “take themselves out” if they wish to do so. If nobody held the person down or forced them to do drugs, the death should be the sole responsibility of the user. What’s next? Jailing store owners for selling cigarettes or alcohol when people die of lung cancer or cirrhosis?
Tv says
I have to agree with you.
DHSHH says
Must agree as well if a person is reaching out looking for drugs and that person doesn’t respect the drug enough to be cautious and test it by doin a small amount first in order to test potentcy and does to much and kills himself. Then that’s on him. You can’t do less, you can always do more but not less once it’s done it’s done. But it shouldn’t be on the person who gave it to them they willingly made the call drive to location purchase it and say thank you. I have witnessed first hand the joy and excitement people get from the minute the dealer says yea come on to the point of use and even after use only time the excited feeling goes away is when they run out. The problem is also the fact that different people alter the drugs different some make theres weaker so it makes them more money and person does more and comes back more others don’t mess with it and then people get and then don’t run out as fast. When your addiction is physically dependent without it can’t work or function. Alot of times people seek the drugs to alleviate pain in order to go to work to manage getting through rigours day of manual labor especially after years and years of manual labor it takes a toll on the body and opiates are needed in order just to get out of bed due physical pain from manual labor to get to the job and get through shift. Ill pray for the families in both these situations they have each been through though on seperate sides it’s still sad and sucks to see. This is also just my opinion on the situation. If someone sells someone a gun and the person kills himself. Is the person who sold it to him responsible???? I’m just saying. Technically the same thing at the end of the day.