City councilors in Somerville, Massachusetts, are considering getting rid of technology used to capture the sound of gunfire in communities and alert police.
Somerville City Councilor At Large Willie Burnley Jr. introduced an order to discuss the e…
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2 arrested in Auburn after police chase
Massachusetts State Police arrested a man and a woman in Auburn Thursday after a chase.
Police say a vehicle that was being sought after a shoplifting incident at the Wrentham Village Outlets was seen on I-495 northbound in Hopkinton.
According …
Boston police seek missing 15-year-old last seen in Roxbury
Police in Boston are asking for the public’s help to find a missing 15-year-old girl.
Serenity Wallace McPherson was last seen on Wardman Road in Roxbury, police said Wednesday night. They did not say when she was seen or what she was wearing…
Teen charged with murder in fatal shooting of high school student in Fall River
A 19-year-old man has been arrested on murder charges in last week’s deadly shooting of a high school student in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Police responded to Rock Street around 11:40 a.m. last Thursday, finding 18-year-old Colus Jamal Mills…
Pain lingers for parents years after daughter’s overdose death
More than four years after their daughter’s overdose death, two Massachusetts parents continue to grieve as they press for changes in how drug dealers are prosecuted.
“Are you alive? Please call me, I’m worried sick about you,” Nancy Fusaro frantically texted her daughter, Nicole, not hearing from her for a few days.
Her heart sank every time she hit send. Nancy Fusaro and her husband, Nick, were always in constant communication with Nicole, texting every morning and every night, but on the night of Nov. 14, 2019, Nicole’s phone went silent.
“We knew it wasn’t good,” said Nick Fusaro.
The 24-year-old Suffolk University graduate student excelled at sports and loved to travel. She dreamed of opening her own business, but on Nov. 17, those dreams came to a tragic end when she overdosed inside the Natick apartment of Rafael Ashworth on Morse Street — just yards away from the police station.
An autopsy showed she died of acute toxicity due to a combination of fentanyl and other drugs.
“We didn’t have a kid that was on drugs,” Nick Fusaro said.
Ashworth, who had been dating Nicole Fusaro for a few weeks, texted her a video where he can be seen smiling while cranking a pill press and making bars of counterfeit Xanax. Thousands of pills can be seen on another video. Evidence photos from inside his apartment show mounds of drugs and a stash of fentanyl that investigators say was found in his nightstand.
Evidence showed on Nov. 13, Ashworth texted Fusaro, “I have to go to Boston anyway to make a play to tiger tomorrow so we can get a little lit for thirsty Thursday.” In another text she asked him for “zans.”
Ashworth picked Fusaro up at her condo in Boston the next night, evidence showed.
Days after Fusaro’s parents reported her missing, police showed up to do a wellness check at Ashworth’s apartment. They say Ashworth told them he hadn’t seen her for two weeks. Two hours later, a friend stopped by the apartment and found Fusaro’s lifeless body on Ashworth’s bed. He walked across the street to tell police someone had overdosed.
According to court records, when police came back to the apartment, Ashworth was incoherent and unable to walk. They found Fusaro in the bed, where she had been dead for days.
Prosecutors say Ashworth even used her credit card during that time.
“What was he going to do with her body? Was he going to cut it up? Was he going to burn it? For four years, those were the questions that kept me up at night,” said Nancy Fusaro. “How can someone have a body there? The police station is right across the street.”
“Never cried out for any help even, didn’t even call 911,” added Nick Fusaro.
Four years after Nicole Fusaro’s death, a federal jury convicted Ashworth of possessing fentanyl with intent to distribute, but didn’t find that he provided her the deadly dose that killed her.
Brian Boyle, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency in New England, says the feds are targeting more dealers in death-by-distribution cases, but proving that the dealer is responsible is difficult.
“I think the biggest challenge is we have to obtain the evidence and you need to show the proof that that individual died as a result of that fentanyl that was supplied on the scene,” said Boyle.
The cases are challenging at the federal and state level. Our investigation last fall into overdose death prosecutions in Massachusetts found some alleged dealers have been charged with manslaughter at the state level, but in many counties, overdose death cases aren’t fully investigated or prosecuted — something the Fusaro family would like to change.
Nancy Fusaro said prosecuting the dealers tells families that someone cares about their loved one’s death.
“Something has to be done, people are dying every day,” she said.
“It’s the worst thing that can happen to you, believe me,” said Nick Fusaro.
Ashworth faces from five to 40 years in prison. His lawyer says he accepts responsibility for the drug charges, but didn’t have anything to do with Fusaro’s death.
This Mass. woman paid off $70K in credit card debt – here’s how
Credit card debt is at record levels. U.S. consumers have nearly $1.3 trillion in credit card debt.
That’s a head-spinning number, but you know the impact of it if you’re overwhelmed and struggling to pay your own credit card bills.
But even if it seems impossible, you can turn it around. Melissa John Giusti of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, did it.
When Giusti graduated from law school, she got a low-paying first job and was saddled with student loan debt.
“I think that just kind of was a catalyst for me of, just using my credit card to pay off things because I didn’t really have the cash to do it,” said Giusti.
“I ended up maxing out all of my credit cards at once. And then once that happened, I couldn’t dig out from underneath that…it’s overwhelming.”
Giusti had $70,000 in credit card debt. Over the years her salary increased, and she made minimum credit card payments, but she wasn’t making a dent in it.
“I went to see a financial advisor, and the financial advisor said to me, point blank, you make over $100,000 and you’re drowning in debt right now, you’re drowning,” she remembers. “And that was sort of a wakeup call to me.”
The financial advisor referred her to Money Management International, a nonprofit credit counseling service.
MMI negotiated low-interest rates on her credit cards and organized her debt into one monthly payment.
She began to chip away at it and was forced to change her spending habits.
“When they take your credit cards away …and you’re spending cash, you do say to yourself, I don’t have any cash in my pocket, so I’m going to make spaghetti tonight,” she says.
“I think another thing that I learned to do was to say no to my friends when they were going out to eat.”
Giusti, who recently bought a house, says she quickly got into the habit of tracking her spending and sticking to a budget. She paid off her credit card debt in three years, and now regularly puts money into a savings account.
She has one travel rewards credit card that she pays off every month.
“I log into my credit card account every day so I can see what I spent yesterday and I make note of that,” she says. “I have a little budgeting journal that I enter in how much money I spent the previous day…I equate it to like a weight loss program where they make you step on the scale every day so that you are monitoring, like how your weight is fluctuating. It’s the same type of thing. I’m noticing how my money is fluctuating and where it’s going and what I’m spending it on.”
Giusti says her experience with MMI was life-changing and she hopes her story will inspire others to take action.
How does it feel to have crawled out from under $70,000 worth of debt?
“The freedom that you feel when you don’t have that debt on your shoulders anymore. It’s really hard to describe, but I was able to buy this house,” she says. “I was able to not freak out every time my credit card payment was due…the freedom of that, it’s just really indescribable.”
If you do enter into a debt management plan with MMI, there are some nominal client fees that go along with that, an average of $24 a month, but that is offset by interest savings.
You can get more information on Money Management International here: https://www.moneymanagement.org/
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