Morton teen faces guilty plea or trial in drug deaths

A Morton teenager has the choice of a March trial or a guilty plea on charges involving the deaths of two other young men who drank fatal doses of a prescription drug he allegedly sold to them.

One of those victims, Cody Schillinger, sat in a Peoria hospital waiting room the night of May 31, 2012, while Daughlton Calvin underwent treatment for drug overdose symptoms.

The next day Schillinger, 19, also of Morton, was pronounced dead at the same hospital. He “was clearly under the influence of something” at the hospital the night before, a police detective has testified, and never awoke after returning home.

Calvin, who turned 19 last week, is charged with selling Schillinger and Manito resident Travis Whiteman, 22, the liquid doses of methadone that — in Schillinger’s case combined with another prescription painkiller — killed them.

Tazewell County Circuit Judge Kevin Galley on Feb. 8 scheduled Calvin’s trial for March 18 and set March 11 for a final pre-trial conference.

He’s been in custody since his arrest in mid-June on two charges of drug-induced homicide, a Class X felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Calvin had no prior arrest record in Tazewell County.

He is the only person who has been charged so far in connection with the unprecedented total of 34 deaths by drug overdose in Tazewell County last year, including 27 involving drugs available only by medical prescriptions.

Nine of those deaths were attributed to methadone, a painkiller that’s been commonly used for several decades to treat heroin addiction. It’s typically available only through licensed methadone clinics to counter addicts’ withdrawal symptoms.

Calvin reportedly told police he stole doses of the drug from a woman’s purse and sold them to Whiteman and Schillinger. He said he warned Whiteman not to drink the entire dose, then watched as he did. Whiteman died several hours later.

Calvin sold more of the drug to Schillinger before he apparently took a drug that soon required his hospitalization, according to police investigations.