The fates of three people who said they were on a rescue mission to help save a teenager from a New York heroin den could be decided by a New Jersey judge on Monday.
John Cramsey (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)
John Cramsey of of East Greenville, Montgomery County, Kimberly Arendt of Lehighton, and Dean S. Smith of Upper Milford Township are scheduled to appear at 9 a.m. in Superior Court in Jersey City.
The judge is expected to rule on whether a Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officer had probable cause on June 21 to stop Cramsey’s truck at the Holland Tunnel.
The officer says he stopped them over a windshield crack, but the defendants argue it’s more likely they were pulled over because they were in a vehicle adorned with crosshairs and pro-Second Amendment decals.
All three have pleaded not guilty to weapon possession charges.
The trio were on their way to help 18-year-old Jenea Patterson, a girl they believed to be in trouble with drugs in the Bronx. Patterson had reportedly called Arendt, her former counselor, after a friend had overdosed.
Police stopped the group at the Holland Tunnel and said they found a cache of weapons and marijuana in Cramsey’s truck. Officers allegedly seized five loaded handguns, a shotgun, an assault rifle, body armor, three bags of marijuana and a pipe.
Cramsey said Sunday he hopes justice will prevail and the judge will see all involved were only trying to do greater good. He launched the anti-heroin group Enough is Enough in the Lehigh Valley after his 22-year-old daughter died of a heroin overdose last year.
Kimberly Arendt, left, John Cramsey, center, and Dean Smith, are seen on a monitor during their video arraignment at Hudson County Courthouse on June 22, 2016, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo)
Cramsey said he had no plans to use the guns found in his vehicle in June. They were from the gun range he owns in Upper Milford Township in Lehigh County and he was in a rush to find Patterson, he said.
“It was all target ammo. There was no self-defense ammo in the truck,” Cramsey said Sunday. “If I was still a carpenter, they could have caught me with a tool belt in my truck.
“We had no intentions of getting into any trouble. Simply going to bring the poor girl home after awakening to see her friend lying next to her in the bed dead of an overdose. That is all.”
‘It will haunt me forever’
Cramsey said he has helped more than 100 people since his daughter’s death, which has included pulling young women involved in prostitution and drugs out of hotels and helping about a dozen addicts get into recovery homes.
But he remains haunted by not saving Patterson that day.
“I am deeply saddened by the death of Jenea,” Cramsey said.
The teen died of an apparent drug overdose last month at a hospital near Wilkes-Barre, Pa., according to her father, James Patterson.
“When I went down to get her in New York, I told her right then and there this is a warning sign for you,” Patterson told the Associated Press. “I grabbed her and I held her in my arms and I said ‘You’ve gotta get out of the game, Jenea, death is knocking at your door.’ “
Cramsey said he attended Patterson’s funeral service and met James Patterson.
“I continue every day to fight for the lives of addicts everywhere and assist those in need even from many states away,” Cramsey said. “It is a sad day when all I can ask myself after having been so successful in helping so many without losing one — ‘What if I had reached her?’
“Only God knows the answer to that question, but it will haunt me forever. Had I gotten to her, could I have made a difference? I will never know.”
Cramsey vowed to James Patterson he would do even more to help the uptick in those battling drugs nationally. He said he plans to launch a national fundraiser assisting those with minimal or no health insurance so they can enroll in proper rehabilitation programs.
He wants to create a 6K walk/run fundraiser representing the six miles he was away from reaching Patterson when he was stopped at the Holland Tunnel. Following their arrests at the Holland Tunnel, all three were jailed and Cramsey spent three months behind bars.
“Out of over a hundred I have personally assisted in getting the proper medical treatment needed to get them started on the road to recovery, only one person who reached out to me didn’t get that chance,” Cramsey said. “That is why we will create ‘The Jenea 6K.'”
Cramsey on Jan. 29 also led a rally and march around the Super 8 Motel in Allentown — a place where Cramsey says he helped four people using drugs — and the nearby Royal Motel. An estimated 50 people, including those carrying signs with photographs of lost loved ones to drugs, turned out.
“Drugs will never go away, but we have to slow it down,” Cramsey then told the crowd through tears. “We’re burying our leaders of tomorrow.”
Drug crusader leads anti-heroin rally
Battling addiction
Patterson in an Associated Press report described Jenea — the older of his two daughters — as having a good heart and enjoying helping others.
She started abusing prescription pills at age 13. She later started using heroin and was sent to a program for troubled youth in 2014, where she met Arendt.
But Patterson told the Associated Press his daughter got worse after leaving.
“I begged people, if you let that child on the street, she’s going to die.” Patterson said. “Here we are two years later, I’m burying my daughter.”
Ed Weaver, the admissions director for the Youth Services Agency program Patterson attended, told the AP that most teens spend about 90 days at the camp in Jim Thorpe, Pa. He said there are classes and the program also offers anger management, vocational training and trauma-based therapy.
“We try to give them the best skills that we can, but it’s ultimately up to where they’re going back to,” Weaver said. He spoke generally and not of Patterson’s case, but said it comes down to “the support of the family and of Children and Youth services and probation officers to keep them on the path.”
Patterson believes public officials need to do more with job training, tougher sentences for dealers and education for young people. He also wants to form an organization to help users and dealers stop, as well as raise money to pay for his daughter’s funeral expenses and for other families whose children meet a similar fate.
“I’m trying to link up with everyone who has lost a child of a drug overdose,” Patterson said. “If we don’t come together and we do nothing, then more of them are going to die.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
