New Lenox Man Pleads Guilty in Friend's Heroin Death

JOLIET – A New Lenox man who used heroin alongside his friend and then left him unconscious outside his parents' house told a judge Tuesday that he wished he could take it back.

Nicholas J. DePratt, 30, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for his part in friend Brandon Robinson's fatal heroin overdose in 2012. Judge Dave Carlson handed down an eight-year prison sentence. DePratt, who has spent three years in jail, will be up for parole next year.

On Nov. 25, 2012, the childhood pals drove to Harvey to buy heroin — a common activity for the two.

"Brandon had the money. I had the car," he said, as reported by the Herald-News. "I never dreamed it would turn out that way."

But it's what happened next that showed DePratt's true colors, Robinson's family says. After using, 27-year-old Robinson passed out, and DePratt discarded him on the lawn of his parents' home in the 700 block of Stonegate Road in New Lenox. His father found him the next morning, dead from cold exposure and contributing factors heroin and cocaine intoxication.

"I went out to collect my garbage cans and my son was in my front yard,” his father Bill Robinson told the Herald-News in a heart-wrenching April 2016 interview. “I’m convinced I could have saved my son’s life. But the fact of the matter is the person that provided him with the drugs also didn’t care enough to even call or drop him off somewhere, or throw a brick through my window.”

The elder Robinson knew of his son's battle with heroin but professed that he had nearly beaten it. Robinson, of New Lenox, even spoke to the graduates of Will County's Drug Court program — the same program in which his son had been enrolled — that he seemed to have overcome it. He had gotten his GED and landed a job just before giving in to it again. He made a series of bad choices that November day, he said, but DePratt enabled him.

DePratt originally faced a charge of drug-induced homicide, with a possible 30-year prison sentence. His attorney Neil Patel called the alternative plea and sentence a "fair resolution that will allow everyone to get some kind of closure and move on."

Robinson's family said Brandon's "demons led him there," but DePratt betrayed his trust.

DePratt seemed repentant, but ultimately blamed the drug, saying "when you're injecting [heroin] you're rolling the dice on your life."

Photo: Nicholas DePratt