PAW PAW, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — A Van Buren County father has been sentenced in the fatal overdose death of his teenage son.
48-year-old Gary Birkhead was handed down a sentence of one year in jail, and five years probation during a district court appearance on Monday, December 9th.
Birkhead was charged with involuntary manslaughter and homicide after being arrested by Michigan State Police in March of 2019, and has concurrently served 264 days of his sentence already.
State police say that his son, Cole Birkhead, used illegal drugs from 2015 until his death in August 2017. The father failed to seek medical treatment for his son and investigators say he supplied him with cocaine, meth, and heroin that he had used himself.
Cole Birkhead died at Bronson Hospital in Kalamazoo after an overdose episode in his father’s car near Hartford.
Police were looking into the suspicious circumstances surrounding the juvenile’s death for over a year before arresting and charging Birkhead in 2019.
