Dealer gets 15 years to life in drug death

Prosecutors urged the judge to send a message to drug dealers, so she sent an East Kingston man to prison, possibly for the rest of his life, for selling a teen drugs that later killed him.

Rockingham County Superior Court Judge Patricia Coffey sentenced Anthony D’Amelio, 63, to 15 years to life in the death last year of Ryan Scammon-Rawson, 18, of Kingston.

D’Amelio sold Scammon-Rawson three oxycodone pills. During a traffic stop later that evening, the teen swallowed the pills and died the next morning.

Coffey also ordered D’Amelio to pay a $4,000 fine and $19,000 to cover the cost of Scammon-Rawson’s funeral.

It was the second time someone has been convicted in the county on charges of providing drugs that caused a death. The first case ended two weeks ago when a different Rockingham County judge sentenced Dante Silva of Newton to 10 years to life in prison.

In Silva’s case, prosecutors said he injected his 18-year-old girlfriend with heroin, and then after seeing her overdose, collected incriminating evidence and left. Coffey said that Silva used drugs along with his victim, “and that was much more of a joint enterprise.”

In court, Coffey told D’Amelio, she considered his crime even worse.

“What you did was cold, calculated and motivated only by greed. You sat in your comfortable home and you sold the nature of death to this kid.”

Deputy Rockingham County Attorney Tom Reid told Coffey that D’Amelio’s conduct rocked the victim’s family.

“Today, I’m asking you to rock their community,” Reid said, referring to drug dealers.