Witness Testifies Victim ‘Dope Sick’

2 men on trial in Harrisburg slaying

The Patriot News

December 9, 2004

By Reggie Sheffield

of The Patriot News

Haydee Freytes was strung out on drugs, down on her luck and willing to do anything for more drugs or money, witness testified in Dauphin County Court yesterday.

Samuel Taggert said he was present when Freytes received the bags of heroin that, police say led to her killing.

Mwandishi G. Mitchell gave Freytes several bags of heroin to sell in the fall of 2000, Taggert testified. But Freytes never sold the drugs or paid Mitchell for the heron, Taggert said.

Mitchell, 31, and Glenn D. Taylor, 43, are charged with beating and killing Freytes. Their weeklong trial continued yesterday.

Authorities say Freytes was killed over the drug debt on qov. 1, 2000. Her body was lumped by Italian Lake in Harrisburg, police say.

“She was dope sick,” Taggert testified.

Mitchell, of the 100 block of South 14th Street, and Taylor, of Arrow Road, face life in prison if convicted of murder.

Taggert testified that he sold drugs for Mitchell. Mitchell in turn was getting the drugs from Taylor, Taggert said. Taggert said he and Taylor were childhood friends.

According to Taggert, Mitchell gave Freytes “six or seven bags” worth about $100. Taggert said she never sold the drugs.

After word of Freytes’ theft spread through the Allison Hill drug community, others taunted Mitchell, Taggert said. Freytes bragged that she never intended to pay it back, Taggert said.

Taggert said Freytes, a known prostitute and drug user, had a reputation for ripping off customers with bags of fake heroin known as “burn bags.”

“It was known that she was beating people when they gave her drugs to sell for them,” Taggert said.

In other testimony yesterday, another witness told jurors about the night that police say Mitchell and Taylor killed Freytes.

She said that she was in the car that night with Mitchell and Taylor when they picked up Freytes. The identity of the witness, an admitted former prostitute and crack addict who says she has straightened out her life, is being withheld by The Patriot-News.

Mitchell and Taylor drove Freytes to Italian Lake and beat her, the witness said. She died of a gunshot wound to the head, police said.

The witness said Freytes was dressed in a yellow sundress, contradicting testimony from police witnesses and crime scene photographs showing Freytes wearing dark denim pants and a Tshirt.

In other testimony, Dauphin County work release center inmate Nathaniel Maurice Holmes III told jurors that Taylor warned him against “snitching.”

“The only thing he told me directly was ‘Don’t snitch, otherwise you’ll pay the cost,” Holmes said.

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