ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Jurors in the murder trial of an Alpharetta man accused of injecting his friend with heroin heard Thursday from a man who admits he sold the man and his friend the drugs.
Prosecutors say Cory Ben-Hanania administered the drugs to his friend, Chelsea Bennett, and when she overdosed, that he failed to call for help for 10 hours.
Kevin McCaffrey testified that last March, a friend named Sebastian Andrade contacted him about getting a hold of some drugs for him and his friends.
"Two different $40 bags of heroin and a $20 bag of coke,” McCaffrey testified.
He said that Ben-Hanania, Andrade and Bennett met him at his Franklin Road apartment in Marietta and drove to a hotel on Delk Road, where McCaffrey obtained the drugs. He said he handed them off to the trio, and went on his way.
“After I’d gone to sleep I received a phone call from Sebastian saying he was worried about Chelsea. He believed she had done too much of the drugs,” McCaffrey testified.
He said he told Andrade to call 911.
Police later arrested McCaffrey and Andrade, in addition to Ben-Hanania for their roles in Chelsea’s death. Andrade took a plea deal, as did McCaffrey, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for selling the heroin.
Jurors also heard from the lead detective on the case.
Alpharetta Detective David Bochniak testified he became suspicious of Ben-Hanania, after he preemptively provided officers with the results of a drug test before anyone questioned him about drug use.
“I was surprised,” he said. “I've never had anything like that happen before in a case. I was confused.”
Bochniak said he became even more suspicious when Ben-Hanania offered to let him see texts he had exchanged with Bennett in the hours leading up to her death.
“These are obviously indicative of drug use. Immediately gave me the impression that Cory was doing drugs with Chelsea,” he said. “It becomes clear that Cory is lying to us, and that’s obviously a big problem for us, especially when we’re dealing with someone who is dead.”
Bochniak testified that Ben-Hanania tried to tell detectives the conversation was about alcohol use, but he said he didn’t believe him and later discovered that nearly 20 texts had been deleted from Bennett’s iPhone.
Bochniak testified that he had no evidence Ben-Hanania was the person who deleted the messages from the phone.
Prosecutors said they intended to call the medical examiner, and would then rest their case. It’s unclear whether the defense will call Ben-Hanania, but his attorney indicated Wednesday he might call him to the stand.
WSBTV
