She grew up in the Detroit, Michigan Metropolitan Area and came to national attention due to her lethal GHB overdose, at the age of 15.
[1] On January 16, 1999, Samantha Reid and her friends, Melanie Sindone and Jessica VanWassehnova, attended a party where three young men offered them drinks.
[1][2] The young men brought them the cocktails, to which they had added either gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) or gamma-butyrolactone (GBL).
[2] Joshua Cole, Daniel Brayman, and Nicholas Holtschlag were sentenced to 15 years for the involuntary manslaughter charge and two counts of mixing a harmful substance.
The basis for the appeal and dismissal was the claim that the prosecution had contradicted itself by asserting that the manslaughter was involuntary while the poisoning was intentional.