Vengeful father jailed for pursuing drug dealers after his model daughter died of overdose
Dad John Cramsey was found with a huge collection of guns as he drove into New York, sparking fears of a terror attack
THE father of a young model who died of a drug overdose has been jailed after being found with a car full of guns with the man claiming he was on a rescue mission to save heroin addicts.
John Cramsey was arrested in the Holland Tunnel on his way to New York City last month with police finding a cache of weapons but the 50-year-old has since insisted he was not involved in a terror plot but was instead performing vigilante work to save the lives of drug addicts, five months after his daughter’s death.
His daughter Alexandria ‘Lexii’ Cramsey was just 20-years-old when her body and that of her boyfriend Quillis Calhoun were found in February, with the aspiring model’s death blamed on an overdose of heroin and Fentanyl.
It is understood they were watching Netflix together in an Allentown, Pa., warehouse apartment when they fatally overdosed.
Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Cramsey said he had been left devastated by his daughter’s death but had quickly become determined to do something.
He said: “My world ended.
“Words can’t describe how fast it happened.
“She went from this beautiful young lady to this beautiful young woman overnight, and just as fast, she was gone.”
Starting up a Facebook group, Enough is Enough, Cramsey, who separated from Lexii’s mother when their daughter was still in diapers, said he knew he had not been around enough in his daughter’s life but wanted to make her life matter.
He then started a crusade to help other drug addicts.
But it was on one such crusade that he and two others were stopped by police for a cracked windshield on June 21 with police finding a trove of weapons in the Dodge SUV, including a .45-caliber handgun, an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and four other semiautomatic handguns that were mostly all loaded.
He has since claimed that he was on his way to Queens to try and 'extract' a 16-year-old girl from a party.
But Cramsey said: “I’m not the criminal people say I am.
“There is a lot people don’t know yet.”
He claimed that since his daughter’s death, he has rescued dozens of addicts.
Cramsey said: “There are people I’ve literally carried out on my shoulder.
“I’ve also had people who consciously went into treatment.”
He said he knew Lexii struggled with fibromyalgia, depression and anxiety but had never realised she would turn to dangerous drugs.
He said: “There was nothing I could do to bring my baby girl back. The only thing I could do to heal myself was to help other parents who are going through the same heartache.
“The difference is not seeing the body counts go up.”
He is now in the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, NJ, on $75,000 bail.
“We’re going to make the biggest heroin-awareness program that the state’s ever seen, and my daughter will be the heart of it,” Cramsey said. “I don’t want her to be remembered with drugs. This was new to her. This was innocence gone wrong.”
He said his last memory of his daughter was hugging her in the rain while outside his gun range, Higher Ground Tactical, in Emmaus, Pa.
Cramsey said he had never met his daughter’s new boyfriend, Quillis Calhoun, but the young man had reached out to him, assuring him that he would keep Lexii safe.
His daughter had been hooked on Xanax and Percocet for years, revealing in her diary, shared with the Post by her mother Gina, that she believed her boyfriend was secretly doing heroin again.
Lexii had just returned from a photoshoot in Mexico, one of her first steps towards her dream career of being a fashion model, when she overdosed.
The 5’11 stunner had been handpicked by the director of a model management agency to fly to Mexico for a three-month modelling residency.
Wanted director Mau Medellin said: “I was in love with her look. She had these beautiful eyes that popped out right away."
Photographer Rodrigo Triana, who shot Lexii for Phoenix Magazine, said: “She was so confident in front of the camera and gave everything she [had] to make a great shoot. New gorgeous pose after the next.”
In the months before her death, Lexii took to Facebook saying: “Vincent Van Gogh ate yellow paint because he thought it would make the walls of his body happier. There are yellow sunflowers growing on his grave. I think that is just beautiful. We all do something to hide the pain, even if it means painting our souls a brighter color.”
She also urged people to be happy with their flaws and mistakes in a Youtube video uploaded in 2011.
In it, the then young teen said: “Life sucks and it’s not a walk in the park but you are young and you’re going to grow up and you’re going to learn from your experiences and learn from all of this.
“Don’t let people to bring you down… It will all get better, I promise.”
On Wednesday, Cramsey’s second attempt to lower his bail was denied by Superior Court Judge Martha Royster.
His attorney, James Lisa, said an appeal was expected to be lodged.