A Texas couple was arrested and charged with selling fentanyl-laced pills to children, leaving three dead and seven hospitalized after overdosing on the deadly drugs.
According to federal agents, 21-year-old Luis Eduardo Navarrete and 29-year-old Magaly Mejia Cano sold fake OxyContin and Percocet pills laced with fentanyl, also known as “M30s” to high school drug dealers in their Carrollton, Texas home.
The laced pills made their way to Dan F. Long and DeWitt Perry middle schools and R.L. Turner High School, where they were sold to students as young as 13 years old.
Police arrested Cano and Navarrete on Friday, February 3, and charged them with conspiring to distribute fentanyl.
The Justice Department said that 10 drug overdoses of minors were reported in six months between September 2022 and February 2023.
Three of the children died from the pills. The youngest minor was 13 years old.
Court documents state that Navarrete sold the drugs directly to students, with law enforcement officers spotting him handing the drugs to a student drug dealer during surveillance on January 12. The officers followed the student and caught him snorting the pills in his high school bathroom, and he admitted to getting them from Navarrete.
One of the survivors was a student that reportedly overdosed twice and was temporarily paralyzed. She told officers that she knew Navarrete and had previously purchased pills from him.
Her first overdose occurred on Christmas Eve, which she survived after getting rushed to a nearby hospital. On January 16, the teen overdosed again and suffered temporary paralysis.
Searching the student’s house turned up several “M30” pills.
US Attorney Leigha Simonton condemned the couple’s actions saying that to sell fentanyl is to endanger lives knowingly and to sell the drug to minors and school children is equivalent to shattering their futures.
The list of children that died or had to be revived in the ER due to drug overdoses was growing week by week, and the most recent death linked to the couple’s fentanyl distribution ring happened on February 1.
Navarrete’s main communication channel with the student dealers was Instagram.
Dallas County Criminal records show that Navarrete pleaded guilty to a 2020 domestic violence assault case in Carrollton. Cano has no criminal history.
There is a possibility that the children did not know they were taking fentanyl, as it is often pressed into tablets to resemble pills and distributed as fake Xanax, Percocet, and OxyContin pills.
The couple could both be jailed for up to 20 years if convicted.