He Sold $80 of Pot, Turned Informant, Ended Up Dead

Six weeks after Andrew Sadek was last seen leaving his North Dakota State College of Science dorm in May 2014, his body turned up in the Red River. He'd been shot in the head. The 20-year-old was attending college on an electrician's scholarship and was just weeks shy of graduating, but he'd spent the past several months as a drug informant after police caught him selling a small amount of marijuana—$80 total. In a video of a meeting between Sadek and a narcotics detective, Sadek is encouraged to agree to make a handful of drug buys for police in exchange for avoiding felony charges, with the potential penalty being up to 40 years in prison and a $40,000 fine. Sadek agreed without consulting his parents or a lawyer, reports the Daily Beast. Now Sadek's parents are suing a task force deputy and the county for both failing to train their son and to "reasonably supervise" him.

"The police just need to do their own job," Tammy Sadek says. "They don't need to use our children to do their job." She tells the Daily Beast that police framed her son's death as suicide. The family believes it was murder and connected to his informant work, noting Sadek's body was found wearing different clothes than he'd worn the day he disappeared and without a wallet. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the North Dakota BCI, and NDSCS campus police are all investigating, reports the Grand Forks Herald, but the gun used to kill Sadek has yet to be found. With no developments in the case, the Sadeks have asked the FBI to take over. The AP reports that the Sadeks are seeking an unspecified amount in economic damages, as well as non-economic damages related to mental anguish, grief, and emotional distress. (More informant stories.)