Michael Yagmin, the ex-New Britain firefighter who lost his job amid a drug scandal, was killed last month by an accidental overdose of fentanyl and xylazine, the medical examiner’s office reported Tuesday.
Yagmin was found dead at his Farmington Avenue apartment in April, 14 months after the city had fired him for lying about his role in a secretive ring of New Britain firefighters who had been using drugs on duty as well as off duty.
Yagmin, 39, had spent 18 years as a city firefighter, and reached the rank of lieutenant.
But his career quickly imploded when city officials began investigating the death of 36-year-old Firefighter Matthew Dizney, who was found dead in his Southington home on Jan. 26, 2022. An autopsy concluded Dizney’s death was partly due to acute intoxication from a mix of horse tranquilizers, fentanyl and other drugs.
The investigation determined that at least eight city firefighters from had been using narcotics and other drugs on duty, sometimes buying or selling them at their firehouses. Yagmin insisted that he hadn’t sold Dizney illegal drugs, but the city uncovered extensive text messages between the two that indicated otherwise.
New Britain allowed six firefighters to keep their jobs in exchange for accepting demotions and suspensions and undergoing treatment. Yagmin, however, wouldn’t accept that deal, and the city fired him in February 2022. He appealed to a state arbitrator, but lost in January.
Arbitrator Peter Murphy concluded Yagmin’s “core behavior of drug use and his facilitation of such use with another firefighter, leading to his death, is obviously absolutely unacceptable in a public safety officer, especially one in a supervisory role.”
Yagmin, who was single, was found dead in April. Since then, authorities have awaited results of toxicology tests before signing off on his cause of death.
