'Just Unbelievable': 3 Years After Son's Overdose Death, Petrick Family Wants Justice
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – More than three years later, a Twin Cities family awaits justice after a dealer was charged in their son's overdose death.
Nick Petrick, 29, died from fentanyl-laced heroin investigators say his friend bought from Beverly Burrell. She's already been sentenced in the deaths of three young men, but a former police officer's actions are raising new questions in this case.
"We worked side-by-side and I had no idea," Perry Petrick said.
As the only boy in the family, Nick stuck close to his father, growing into his own as a gifted craftsman and hunter on their sprawling New Prague property.
"I miss him," Perry said.
Nick tried heroin for the first time in his late 20s.
"I never suspected him to do drugs like that. Never," Julie Petrick said of her son. "He said it was like two weeks later and he was asleep and he woke and he wanted it – his body wanted it. It's just hard to fathom."
Once friends filled them in, Julie and Perry helped get Nick into a treatment program. Three years later, he was dead. His body was found in a Costco parking lot after police say Nick smoked fentanyl-laced heroin sold by Burrell.
"It was maddening to think all of these other men had died prior," Julie said.
RELATED: Maplewood Woman Charged In Another Heroin Overdose Death
Burrell, 35, is already serving a 22-year sentence in total for the deaths of three other men, but Nick Petrick's is one of two more deaths for which she has yet to be tried.
"The twists and turns that it's taken is just unbelievable," Julie said.
Former Eden Prairie Detective Travis Serafin, who falsified a search warrant application in 2017, worked on the Petrick case two years prior. Last week, a judge ruled no charges would be filed against him.
Still, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office has since dismissed 46 cases with which he was involved. The county attorney's office told WCCO Serafin played more of a peripheral role in Petrick's case and it believes the convictions will stand.
"It just keeps getting postponed and postponed and postponed," Julie said.
Julie and Perry say they can't understand what's taking so long as they wait for some kind of closure.
"You're hopeful that, 'OK, she'll have to pay for what she's done now,' I don't know," Julie said.
A motion hearing in this case is scheduled for Wednesday, but Julie and Perry haven't been told what to expect. Burrell's attorney did not return calls for comment.
