DULUTH — Christopher Sauve long struggled with addiction, his family told a judge Thursday.

Like many, the Duluth man went to treatment and battled the inevitable setbacks and relapses in his quest to get sober. But he always had supportive parents and siblings at his side, right up until his final days three years ago.

“When he died,” mother Helen Makela said, “all of his hope and all of our hope died. Until then, there was hope. And now it’s gone.”

Sauve’s family and friends filled a Duluth courtroom, emotionally recalling their loved one and describing the human toll of the opioid epidemic as they sought a sentence recognizing his death not as an overdose, but as a homicide.

Derrick Vincent Weatherly, 44, of Superior, was denied leniency from Judge Jill Eichenwald, who imposed a gui

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