For Hub City Times

MARSHFIELD – After deliberating for just under two hours, a jury convicted 27-year-old Cassandra Stab of first degree reckless homicide and first degree recklessly endangering safety on Sept. 6. Those were charges filed against the Marshfield woman in connection with the fatal overdose of a Spencer man.

Police say that Staab sold the fentanyl-laced heroin that caused 22-year-old Thomas Bychinski’s death. Heroin laced with fentanyl is particularly deadly, and has made its way into Marathon County over the past two years. The jury’s decision concludes a four-day trial that began Sept. 3 in Marathon County Circuit Court.

Fentanyl is 80-100 times more potent than morphine, and 50 times more potent than heroin, making the combined drugs especially deadly, according to police.

Two people found Bychinski’s body in January of 2017 in a home on Hansen Road in Spencer.

Staab is already serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence in connection with a Wood County heroin trafficking case, and now faces up to 52 years in the Wisconsin Prison System when she is sentenced on the Marathon County charges.

A sentencing date is to be determined. Staab remains jailed at the Taycheedah Correctional Institution.