Police: Man charged in brother's overdose death

WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. — Police said a man is charged in the overdose death of his brother after he sold him six bags of heroin.

Officials said Markus McGowan’s 22-year-old brother, Mathew McGowan, was found unresponsive in a Greensburg apartment on Dec. 28.

Paramedics responded to the same apartment at East Gate Estates three times in 24 hours.

Police said what was being sold as heroin was actually straight fentanyl.

According to a criminal complaint, investigators said the day before Mathew McGowan died, he bought the heroin and overdosed that same day but was revived. The following day, the woman who lives in the apartment came home from the hospital, after overdosing herself, and found Mathew unresponsive.

When police had told Markus McGowan his brother had died from an overdose, they said he began crying and confessed to selling him six bags of heroin.

A third brother, Mariel McGowan, was put in jail last September after officers found 92 bags of the same stamp bags containing fentanyl and no traces of heroin.

Markus McGowan is a football coach with the Jeannette Midget Athletic Association and has been with the program for the past two years.

Cox Media Group