A Skowhegan man will serve at least seven years in prison for an August 2024 crash in Solon that killed a 38-year-old Madison man, according to court records.
Rhaheem Friend, 34, pleaded guilty Aug. 12 to one Class A count of manslaughter, court records show.
Friend, who also has Madison and Pittsfield addresses listed in court records, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, with all but seven years suspended, to be followed by four years of probation.
In exchange for the guilty plea to the manslaughter charge, prosecutors dismissed one Class B count of causing death while license is suspended or revoked and one Class B count of aggravated criminal operating under the influence, court records show.
Friend is now incarcerated at the Maine State Prison in Warren, according to the Department of Corrections. Friend is also serving a nine-month sentence for a partial probation revocation from a 2023 drug possession case, prison records show.
The Aug. 7, 2024, crash on South Solon Road, near Merrill Lane, left Nicholas Foss dead. Foss was a passenger in a 2011 Toyota Camry that Friend was driving, police said.
Police charged Friend with manslaughter and the other two counts in April. At the time, he was being held in jail on other unrelated charges. A Somerset County grand jury indicted him in May.
Detective Michael Lyman of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for Friend after investigating the crash for more than six months, Sheriff Dale Lancaster said at the time.
Lyman’s affidavit supporting the arrest warrant says when Somerset County sheriff’s deputies responded to the crash after it was reported around 7:10 a.m., they found Foss dead and Friend seriously injured in a the Camry.
A Maine State Police reconstruction determined Friend’s vehicle was traveling east at more than 75 mph in the seconds before it lost control at a corner and crashed into a tree. An autopsy of Foss at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta ruled that he died from blunt force injuries from the crash.
At the time, records indicated Friend had no Maine driver’s license and his driving status was revoked due to being a habitual offender, the affidavit says. There were also several active warrants for his arrest.
The Sheriff’s Office investigation determined Friend and Foss were on their way to a home at 1111 South Solon Road that had been busted twice in 2024 for suspected drug trafficking. Those search warrants and investigations produced evidence linked to the fatal crash.
It was believed to have happened hours before it was reported, at approximately 2:20 a.m., the affidavit says.
According to Lyman’s affidavit, instead of calling 911 for help, Friend called a friend — the owner of the home investigated for drug trafficking — kicking off an hourslong search in the middle of the night for the crash site involving several people. Foss, meanwhile, had died in the front seat of the car.
Deputies found a small amount of fentanyl inside the car and cocaine in Foss’ pocket. Both Friend and Foss were believed to have cocaine in their systems at the time of the crash, Lyman wrote in the affidavit.
Friend provided a different account to investigators than other witnesses, according to the affidavit. He said he and Foss were driving away from the South Solon Road residence when a drug dealer named “Drizzy” drove up beside his vehicle, shortly before the crash.
Friend told Lyman that he did not know the drug dealer, whose description matched one of the people arrested in the Sheriff’s Office drug busts, but had heard Drizzy wanted to kill him, according to the affidavit. Friend was not sure what exactly caused the crash.
Lyman found that story, specifically the direction Friend was driving, to be inconsistent with other evidence, including the crash scene analysis, statements from other people who had contact with Friend that night and cellphone records.
Friend told Lyman he should have called 911 for help after the crash but did not because of his active arrest warrants at the time, the affidavit says.
