In the garage outside a high school house party in 2011, Brycen Rodriguez smoked synthetic marijuana he said came from the Cigar Box shop at Aurora’s Fox Valley Mall.
He had a panic attack. He got dizzy. His vision flashed. His breathing and heartbeat became rapid. He threw up, then dry heaved, he said.
“I thought I was going to die,” Rodriguez, 25, said Thursday, during a sentencing hearing for the shop owner, Ruby Mohsin, who pleaded guilty last year to selling Aurora college student Max Dobner, 19, the synthetic marijuana he smoked before he died in a single-car crash later that year.
Mohsin’s sentencing began in November and resumed on Thursday at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago. It was again continued until Jan. 24, when the defense plans to call its last witness, Mohsin’s daughter, who is a physician in New Jersey.
Max Dobner’s mother, Karen Dobner, is also expected to make a victim impact statement.
U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Schneider and federal defender Piyush Chandra questioned witnesses before Judge Charles R. Norgle Sr. Thursday. Mohsin was among those present at the defense table.
Three remaining prosecution witnesses who testified at Thursday’s hearing included Rodriguez and a Kane County deputy sheriff who worked the case as an investigator and a woman who said she warned Ruby Mohsin of the dangerous effects of products she sold. Defense witnesses included a federal defender’s investigator and Mohsin’s two sons.
Rodriguez had heard about synthetic marijuana on Twitter and Facebook, where he said people touted its invisibility on drug screens. He started trying to find it, he said. The first time he went to the Cigar Box, they didn’t appear to have any, he said. But when he and two friends went back and hinted at what they wanted, the person behind the counter pointed it out to them, he said.
He and his friends all pitched in some money, totaling $20, for what he said was about a gram of the substance.
Chandra questioned Rodriguez about his relationship to the Dobners. Rodriguez said he had known Max Dobner since he was about 5 years old and also knew Karen Dobner, but was not aware she was the plaintiff in a civil suit involving the Cigar Box. He recalled going to the Dobners’ home after Max died, but said he had never been to a protest organized by Karen Dobner.
Rodriguez, who has a pre-existing medical condition, said his symptoms such as twitching barely existed before he smoked the synthetic, and became much more prevalent since then.
The attorneys primarily interviewed then-detective Kenneth Johnson about previously reported details of the crash.
While Schneider put a map on courtroom screens depicting the 5.5 miles between the Dobners’ home and the house where Max’s car stopped, Karen cried.
Asked if there was evidence Max Dobner tried to stop, Johnson said no one reported seeing brake lights or tire marks. The force of the crash caused the engine to dislodge from Max’s car and end up in another room of the house.
Johnson was present at the autopsy in 2011, and Chandra started to question him about it.
Norgle quickly cut him off, saying as a sheriff’s officer, not a coroner, Johnson was not a competent expert witness to interpret the autopsy report, and repeatedly asking him to move on.
In court Thursday and in previous hearings and filings, Chandra has pointed out that the report listed Max Dobner’s cause of death as injuries and blunt force trauma due to the car crash, and though synthetic marijuana was found in his system, it was not listed as a contributing factor to his death.
Mohsin’s 21-year-old son talked about how his mother raised him and his siblings on her own after their father died in 2000. She raised them with Islamic values, which included no drinking, and discouraged them from smoking, he said. He described his mom waking up at 6 a.m., cooking food for them, working until 5 p.m., getting home and making sure the kids all ate and had their homework done.
Schneider pointedly clarified that her son said she discouraged smoking, yet she owned a smoke shop.
Mohsin’s 32-year-old son said all throughout his chemotherapy and other cancer treatments starting in 2009, his mom has been his primary provider. She continues to be, though he is now married, he said.
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“If it wasn’t for my mom,” he said, “I never would have survived.”
As he did with the younger brother, Norgle asked him if there was any last thing he wanted people to know about his mother.
“I just ask you give my mom mercy,” he said. “Don’t take her away from me, please, because I need her for everything.”
Norgle said the court had learned Ruby Mohsin did not warn or make known to people she sold the synthetics to that they should take any precautions related to driving when they consumed it.
Mohsin sold the products for a profit, and admitted she was guilty of that, Norgle said. Now, he said the court is dealing with the risk of death or serious bodily harm, a provision for federal sentencing guidelines.