Family of man says he was wrongfully convicted in woman’s overdose death

CHARLOTTE — A family is fighting to get their beloved grandfather out of prison.

They said he was wrongfully convicted of selling drugs to a woman before she overdosed.

Now he’s behind bars.

The family of Ronald McCrorey took to the streets of Concord last weekend.

“The man that I know, he’s a loving father,” said Nevada West, his daughter. “He’s willing to do anything for his family and he’s an honest hard-working man.”

For the first time in McCrorey’s life, he’s an inmate in the North Carolina prison system.

The 70-year-old man is housed at the Mountain View Correctional Institution in Spruce Pine, and his family believes he was wrongfully convicted.

“I just feel like, for one, he should not have been convicted,” said Janice Easterling, McCrorey’s sister.

The victim

Michelle Hooper was a woman who loved her family, said Lisa Hooper, the victim’s mother.

“She loved her daughter,” Lisa Hooper said. “We enjoyed camping as a family, holidays as a family.”

Michelle Hooper died in March 2020, and the state blamed McCrorey.

“I didn’t ask permission to go in the room,” Lisa Hooper said. “I just pulled my dog aside, opened the door. That’s where she was.”

That was when Lisa Hooper found her daughter’s body.

Michelle Hooper moved back home and was trying to stay clean, her mother told Channel 9.

“I’ve tried for years to get Michelle clean and sober,” Lisa Hooper said. “Many halfway houses, rehabs ... many times over. The same place. We really tried to get her off drugs.”

“If there was someone that we could hold responsible for giving drugs to my daughter that ended up killing her … I was all for a trial,” she said.

Prosecutors said McCrorey sold Hooper fentanyl and caused her to have a fatal overdose.

He was convicted of death by distribution in November 2022.

‘Shocked’

“They tried to state that he had been selling drugs for 32 years and that’s not true,” Easterling said. “That’s not true at all.”

McCrorey has never been convicted of a drug charge and has only traffic violations on his record.

He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, worked as a firefighter, and had a side business as a contractor.

“I was shocked,” said Joseph Kendrick, McCrorey’s childhood friend. “I was very shocked.”

Kendrick has known McCrorey for 58 years and doesn’t believe he’s a drug dealer.

The conviction

During the trial in Cabarrus County, there was testimony that drugs were exchanged for sex, which counts as a sale under North Carolina law.

“Sale means any kind of compensation,” said Phil Dixon, an associate professor at the UNC School of Government. “Generally speaking, that’s money. ‘I paid my drug dealer some money. He gives me some drugs.’ But it could easily be, ‘Hey, I’ve agreed to cut your yard in exchange for drugs,’ or some other service.”

The charge of death by distribution can sweep up casual users and not just major drug dealers.

“The way it’s written, it doesn’t matter if I’m selling to 50 people or to one person,” Dixon said.

“I believe it’s fair because if one person is off the streets selling drugs to people that are killing them,” Lisa Hooper said. “That’s one less person dealing drugs.”

McCrorey was sentenced to between six and eight years in prison.

Remembering better times

“See, it as an innocent Caucasian woman and a terrifying Black man who sells drugs and that’s not what he is at all,” McCrorey’s daughter said.

West remembers when times were better.

“He’s always been such a good dad to me,” West said. “He’s done everything. He needed to to make sure I was OK. He was always my No. 1 supporter.”

“I still walked out of that courtroom without her,” said Katie Troutman, Michelle Hooper’s sister. “Crying myself to sleep many nights. Listen to recordings on my phone of her because that’s all I have now.”

McCrorey is appealing the conviction and there is no word on how long that will take.

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