Two Men Charged in Bronx Teacher’s Overdose Death

NEW YORK — In the three hours before his death, Matthew Azimi spoke to one person three times, each conversation lasting under a minute.

The first call was at 3:27 p.m., about 40 minutes after dismissal at the special education high school in the Bronx where Azimi was a teacher. Three hours later, at 6:15 p.m., Azimi was found dead with a syringe and a tiny plastic envelope beside him inside of a faculty restroom, the victim of a fatal drug overdose.

Police said those phone calls Azimi made on Nov. 30, 2017, led New York Police Department detectives to the dealers who sold the deadly drugs. Two men, Kashawn Lyons, 31, and Terrick Whitaker, 31, both of the Bronx, were charged Friday with heroin and fentanyl distribution, and conspiring to sell the drugs.

Lyons, who was arrested Thursday, faces 20 years to life in prison if convicted of peddling the drugs that killed Azimi, federal prosecutors said. Whitaker was still at large.

“Working with the NYPD we will continue to combat the epidemic of lethal opioids that is killing people from all walks of life,” the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, said in a statement Friday.

According to the complaint, there were three calls between Azimi and a person listed in his phone only as “K,” later identified as Lyons. That call lasted 35 seconds. Thirteen minutes later at 3:40 p.m., the complaint said, Lyons called Azimi and the two men spoke for 32 seconds. At 4:05 p.m., Azimi was captured on a surveillance camera at a pharmacy purchasing syringes a few blocks from Public School X811, where he taught disabled students.

Seven minutes later, Azimi received another call from Lyons that lasted 17 seconds. Two hours later Azimi was dead.

Police began investigating Lyons, who was on probation. He had been released in September from federal prison, where he served three years for a firearms conviction.

During the investigation, an undercover officer bought heroin laced with fentanyl, a potent and synthetic additive, from Lyons and Whitaker on four occasions in February, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The charges gave Azimi’s wife, Rachel, some closure, but she said Sunday that “nothing will bring him back.”

If she could speak to the men, she said she would tell them “how many people they hurt by this.”

Matthew Azimi, a beloved teacher, had hid his addiction from friends, family and colleagues in the weeks leading up to his death. He struggled with drinking and drug use as a teenager in Bedford, New York, and his parents sent him to an alternative school, where he got sober.

He married and had children. He became a teacher, started a horticulture program at the school and played guitar for his students before dismissal. His students adored him.

At his home in Carmel, New York, photos of Azimi and his family hang on the walls along with his academic degrees. His clothes and coats remain in a closet where he left them. His workbag is nearby. His guitar is perched alongside the fireplace. A shelf with his books was left untouched. And in the bathroom, his toothbrush and a shaving kit remain.

Sometimes they are comforting, his wife said, other times they are painful reminders that he is never coming home.

Rachel Azimi was six months pregnant with their third child when her husband died. In March, she gave birth to “a healthy and happy” baby she named Roxanne, whose skin tone, nose, brown hair and eyes favor her father.

“One of the hardest things is I have a beautiful baby that he never saw, never held and he doesn’t know her name,” Rachel Azimi said through tears. “I don’t hate the men responsible for this. I have to grieve my husband and raise my kids. I don’t have room in my heart for hatred.”