MANCHESTER, NH – A 34-year-old city drug dealer, found guilty of selling fentanyl to one man who, in turn, sold it to a third man who died of an overdose, was sentenced Monday to 20 to 40 years in prison.
When Judge Amy Messer announced the sentence for Christopher J. Kean, 34, of Manchester, friends and family members of victim Henry “Hank” Devine, 36, broke into applause. Many wore T-shirts emblazoned with Hank’s photo and the statement “Justice for Hank.”
Kean will have the opportunity to reduce the minimum 20-year sentence by five years if he is found eligible for a drug treatment program and he successfully completes it. He also was given a 7 ½ to 15-year suspended sentence on another charge of sale of a controlled drug.
Kean was found guilty by a Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District jury in April after a three-day trial.
He maintained he gave his girlfriend some fentanyl because she was “dope sick” and he was unaware that the drug was then sold to Michael Fleet who, in turn, sold some fentanyl to Devine, who died from it.
In court, Kean briefly spoke to the family saying, “This destroyed everyone’s lives in this case.” Devine’s sister, Amanda Lambert, in her impact statement said she had talked to Kean months after her brother’s death. She said it was clear to her his goal that day was self-preservation.
She said he had the nerve to tell her that he “had lost everything that day.” In addressing her, Kean said “I tried to give you the truth. I didn’t know what happened.”
Judge Messer, in sentencing him, said mitigating factors in the case was his childhood, when he was sexually and physically abused, and his struggle with addiction.
However, she said the aggravating factors in the case were overwhelming and included his lengthy criminal record and him continuing to sell drugs after Devine’s death. He was arrested for the latter drug sale, pled guilty and is currently serving a sentence in the New Hampshire State Prison. The sentence imposed on Monday is consecutive to that one.
“This was not a $20 hand-to-hand sale,” the judge said in explaining her sentence. Prosecutor Sean D. Karkos, who recommended Kean be sentenced to 30 years to life, said Kean had purchased $2,000 worth of fentanyl and methamphetamine, drugs that were gone within 24 hours.
Judge Messer said Kean also blamed everyone else for Devine’s death, including his girlfriend and Fleet, an old friend of Devine’s who sold him the fentanyl.
“You took zero responsibility,” she said.
Police found Devine’s body on Sept. 26, 2022, inside his truck parked in the lot at Walmart. At the time, Devine was not publicly identified and court documents only referred to the deceased individual as “H.D.”
Prior to Monday’s sentencing, Barbara Murray-Lambert of Manchester contacted Manchester Ink Link saying she wanted people to know the person who died was her son, Hank, a loving father of a five-year-old son, a kind man and someone who was crazy about the Dallas Cowboys, which caught him a lot of flak residing in New Hampshire, where the home team is the New England Patriots.
Her impact statement in court Monday brought spectators to tears. She said her son was a remarkable person with a beautiful soul and a heart of gold. He had the ability to make people smile and laugh, she said.
When she was pregnant with Hank, she said his father battered her, resulting in her repeated hospitalization. She went into premature labor and was rushed from Manchester to a Boston hospital where she gave birth to Hank. She had to feed her infant while he had tubes coming out of him and attached to wire. “Even then he was a strong fighter,” she said.
She left the abusive relationship and later married a man who, together with her, would raise Hank and his other siblings. As a rebellious teenager, however, Hank went to live and work with his biological father who gave him prescription drugs “which changed the course of his life.”’
From then on, he struggled with addiction. He never went to drug rehab, Murray-Lambert said, but instead went through the pain of remission on his own, ultimately gaining sobriety.
One time, she said, Hank had been sober for a time when, sitting on his porch, he saw a guy beating a woman.
“He went down to see if the woman was OK,” Murray-Lambert said. The man had walked off but then he returned and the “guy popped Hank so hard he broke his jaw. He had to have it wired. That’s one of the times he fell off because they gave him pain medication in the hospital.”
Ultimately, she said Hank realized he couldn’t stay off drugs if he remained in Manchester and he left, taking work with a traveling carnival where he ran the Ferris wheel.
“The Ferris wheel was his baby,” she said. That’s where he met a woman who would become the mother of his child. The day his son was born was the happiest day of his life, Murray-Lambert said.
They settled in Indiana but the relationship soured. Murray-Lambert said the mother was preventing Hank from seeing his son. In a phone call home on a Saturday night in September 2022, Hank told his mother what was happening and she urged him to come home, telling him they would hire an attorney and find a way for him to see his son.
He arrived home that Monday and gave her one of his hugs that just enveloped her. “He was strong and healthy,” she said.
On Saturday, he went to a relative’s home and had a few drinks. “I wish I had begged him to stay home. It was the last time I ever saw my son,” she said.
Later that night, he messaged Fleet. Hank was looking to go out but Fleet didn’t want to, according to Murray-Lambert.
“Hank had changed so much and he wasn’t into that crowd,” she said. “He wasn’t doing drugs anymore. Fleet didn’t want to meet up with him because he was embarrassed about his life.”
Fleet had continued the drug lifestyle, she said.
When Fleet said he didn’t want to go out, Hank asked him what he had for “x amount of dollars,” Murray-Lambert said. Fleet sold him some fentanyl, but his mother believes he was buying heroin.
Years earlier, she said she asked Hank why he did drugs. “He said because you feel nothing on heroin,” she said. “I know that my son was in so much pain (about not seeing his son) that he wanted to feel nothing. I can guarantee you my son did not know it was fentanyl.”
After getting the drugs Murray-Lambert said, “He drove around the corner, did the drugs and died.”
He was found by police the following day in his truck in the Walmart parking lot.
At 3 a.m. that Sunday, Sept. 26, 2022, police arrived at her home to inform her and her husband of his death.
Addressing Kean, Murray-Lambert called him an arrogant, heartless man who refuses to take any responsibility for what he did and has done to her and her family.
“He came home for love and support, not to die,” she said. “He thought he was buying heroin. He didn’t know it was fentanyl.”
Murray-Lambert attended Kean’s trial every day and watched Fleet testify. She said he was upset and very remorseful. “He has to live with the fact he killed someone,” Murray-Lambert said.
Kean, on the other hand, showed no remorse, she said.
Kean, she said, took her son from her. “He had so much life left to live.” She told the judge her son only lived for 36 years and because of that, asked that the judge sentenced Kean to 36 years to life.
According to the indictment, on Sept. 25, 2022, Kean sold fentanyl to Fleet, knowing he intended to sell a portion of it, and part of that drug was inhaled, ingested or injected by 36-year-old H.D. resulting in his death.
On April 3, 2024, Fleet pleaded guilty to sale of a controlled drug – death resulting, and falsifying physical evidence. He was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in the New Hampshire State Prison, with four years suspended on the minimum, for a minimum of 6 years. He was given a 12-month sentence on the falsifying physical evidence charge. He also received credit for 499 days of pre-trial confinement.
Defense Attorney John J, Bresaw asked the judge to sentenced Kean to 10 to 20 years, with four years suspended. He said Kean was doing drugs and alcohol at an early age. He began drinking at the age of 8, he said. He was sexually and physically abused as a child and sought outside placement on his own because of his abusive home life.
His father, Bresaw said, indoctrinated him into the drug lifestyle. He said the sentence prosecutors were asking for is what someone convicted of first- or second-degree murder would receive.
He contended evidence at trial showed there was no drug sale. Kean gave the drugs to his girlfriend because she was “dope sick” and Fleet took the drugs without her knowing it. Fleet then provided the drugs to Devine, he said.
The case against Kean was prosecuted by Assistant County Attorneys Karkos and Laura Del Camp.
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