Timothy Anderson told a court Wednesday he was “shaking like a leaf” and was reluctant to speak of his grief over his daughter Sara’s overdose death.

“We fought a war and we lost it,” he said.

Yancy D. Craig, 65, of Kankakee and Dolton, Illinois, was charged with selling fentanyl to Sara Anderson, 25, of Schererville, the day before her March 20, 2021, death, court records allege.

“Can I come by real quick n (sic) get a 40. Of boy (heroin),” Anderson texted him, according to court documents.

Craig was not sentenced Wednesday.

Judge Samuel Cappas reset the hearing for Feb. 6 after Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Dafoe alleged that a witness said in a deposition that Craig sold drugs even after Sara’s death.

Defense lawyer Andrea Bonds hotly contested the accusation – saying it wasn’t anywhere in the case’s discovery, i.e. evidence file.

The deposition’s transcript will be ordered to see if it would impact his final sentence.

Throughout the hearing, both Anderson and Craig’s sister shared how their families got trapped for years by drug addiction.

Early in the hearing, Timothy Anderson told the court his daughter became addicted after her “first boyfriend” gave her drugs in the Lake Central marching band.

They sent her to rehab – setting off a cycle of rehab and relapse.

Before her death, she was doing better, he said, with a “decent job” and a son, Drako.

Her final relapse came out of “nowhere.” The night before, they went to Teibel’s, which was unusual. They never would have gone if they knew it was her last night alive.

Anderson died of a fentanyl overdose, according to the Lake County Coroner’s Office.

Her parents told police they later found a plastic sandwich bag with an “off-white powdery substance” under a potted plant they suspected was heroin, charges allege.

Her father found her body.

“She was not destined to a life of addiction,” he said. “She was poisoned. It says that on her death certificate.”

After her death, he accepted an invitation to meet with DEA agents. For him, the real purpose for being there soon appeared to be something very different.

They wanted to “show their (young) agents what a broken person looks like,” he told the court.

When he found her body, he “got a life sentence.”

Sheila Carter, Craig’s sister, spoke of her and her brother’s struggles.

“My heart goes out to you,” she said, noting she lost her husband to addiction.

She had been clean for nearly 30 years, her brother for 15.

At one point, years back, when her brother was suffering from withdrawal symptoms, she gave him heroin, she said.

She asked for “mercy,” saying a jail sentence would devastate their elderly mother.

Do you know if those drugs you gave him had fentanyl, Dafoe asked.

“Drugs don’t have ingredients on the package,” Carter replied.

Federal data released Jan. 14 showed that overdose deaths have been falling for more than two years — the longest drop in decades — but also that the decline was slowing, according to the Associated Press.

Overdose deaths began steadily climbing in the 1990s with overdoses involving opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths from heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. Deaths peaked at nearly 110,000 in 2022, fell a little in 2023 and then plummeted 27% in 2024, to around 80,000. That was the largest one-year decline ever recorded.

The new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data runs through August 2025 and represents the first update of monthly provisional drug overdose deaths since the federal government shutdown.

An estimated 73,000 people died from overdoses in the 12 months that ended August 2025, down about 21% from the 92,000 in the previous 12-month period.

About 48 million people in the United States struggle with drug or alcohol abuse, according to the New York Times.

The Associated Press contributed.

mcolias-pete@post-trib.com