HOLLIDAYSBURG — A Blair County Prison inmate arrested three years ago has become the last link in a chain of defendants to render guilty pleas in the 2017 fatal overdose of a Tyrone man.

While Shariff Lucas, 32, has already served more than the 2.5- to five-year sentence imposed, the guilty pleas he rendered Friday are expected to result in a state parole violation and additional time in a state prison, District Attorney Pete Weeks said.

Lucas was one of five people charged after a police investigation into the death of 31-year-old Joshua Blowers. His body was found May 31, 2017, in the bathroom of his Tyrone apartment beside empty fentanyl-laced heroin packets.

Tyrone and Altoona police, and agents from the state attorney General’s Office, tracked the deadly heroin to Lucas, who was living in Altoona. Their evidence indicated that Lucas sold heroin to Angela Miles of Tyrone, who sold to Robert Noel of Altoona, who sold to Kyler Johnson of Tyrone.

Johnson, in court in October to address his criminal charges, admitted to providing Blowers with the deadly heroin and to having used heroin with Blowers. Johnson was sentenced to eight years’ probation with participation in the county’s Drug Court.

Miles and Noel, meanwhile, are serving five to 10 years in prison for their offenses in connection with Blowers’ death.

A fifth person arrested in connection with Blowers’ death, Christopher Tremmel, is on probation for 15 years, a sentence that also addressed his offenses in the 2017 overdose death of Gregory Lynam of Altoona.

In court Friday, Judge Timothy M. Sullivan accepted Lucas’ plea agreement calling for a 2.5- to five-year sentence, followed by five years’ probation, to charges of drug delivery resulting in death, possession with intent to deliver and criminal conspiracy to deliver heroin.

Weeks said Lucas deserved more incarceration, but the plea was negotiated in July when the case was being pushed toward trial in August without two key witnesses. Because those witnesses were incarcerated in state prisons, they couldn’t be brought to Blair County because of COVID-19 restrictions forbidding inmate transfers.

“We weren’t pleased to offer the sentence that we did,” Weeks said Friday on behalf of his office. “But without those witnesses, we wouldn’t have had a very triable case.”

Defense attorney Julia Gitelman of Pittsburgh said Lucas, who has been in jail for three years, expects his guilty pleas will result in a parole violation and more jail time.

“He takes this seriously,” Gitelman assured Sullivan.

Blowers’ sister, Heather Johnson of Tyrone, asked Sullivan to consider a longer sentence, through a statement Victim Witness Coordinator Atle Walter read into the court record.

“Your honor, if anyone deserves a five- to 15-year sentence, it is Mr. Lucas,” Johnson wrote.

She said she separates him from the others arrested in her brother’s death because he was the one without a drug addiction.

“He was a person who relied on those struggling addicts to promote his business, to put cash in his pocket,” she said. “The four other individuals arrested in my brother’s death struggled every day with demons we may never know or understand that left them helpless, a slave to the poison that Mr. Lucas pushed.”

Johnson also recalled seeing Lucas, three years ago, at his preliminary hearing where she said he sat with a smirk on his face.

At that hearing, Lucas told Magisterial District Judge Fred Miller that he was living in Altoona with an uncle, after residing at a halfway house in Coalport and serving time in a state prison for a Bedford County heroin delivery case.

When Miller asked him when he last worked, Lucas replied, “Never.”

Then 29 years old, he told the judge that he had been in jail for half his life.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.