SoCal fentanyl dealers face murder charges, prison time as one mother warns: 'They're coming for you'

About a month after dealing fentanyl that killed a 26-year-old San Bernardino County man, Javier Cruz was pulled over as he drove away from his apartment in Ontario. Inside his pocket, officers found 22 fentanyl-laced pills.

When they searched his home afterward, they found another 1,564 pills laced with the drug. Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine, and just two milligrams of pure fentanyl is considered a lethal dose. A teaspoon of sugar contains 4,000 milligrams.

Cruz admitted that he was planning to sell the 22 pills found inside his pocket — as well as the more than 1,000 found in his apartment — a little over five weeks after he sold the drug to someone who died. He confessed as part of a plea deal that led to a 14-year state prison sentence handed down Friday, according to federal court documents.

Ian Pangburn's roommate found him dead in his room a day after Cruz sold to him, his mother, Jennifer Ochoa, said. When she learned Cruz continued dealing after her son's death, she couldn't believe it. "I was angry. I was enraged," she said.

On Friday, she spoke outside the federal court where Cruz was sentenced. 

"And just to let everybody know — they are coming for you if you are selling fentanyl in the state of California," Ochoa said.

Matthew Allen, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's special agent in charge for the Los Angeles Field Division, said after the sentencing that the DEA and federal prosecutors are "vehemently determined to hold accountable those who are bringing deadly poison into our communities."  

"This sentencing should serve as a reminder to fentanyl distributors," Allen said in a statement. "If your activities result in the death of a person, you will face substantial prison time."

In California, 6,095 people died from fentanyl in 2022, according to a report this year from the California Department of Public Health. For men, the drug overdose death rate has doubled in the last eight years, a troubling rise that public health officials have linked to fentanyl.

"Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat the United States has ever faced, killing 38,000 Americans in the first six months of 2023 alone," reads the DEA's National Drug Threat Assessment.

Now, Ochoa joins a growing chorus of parents in Southern California whose children have died from fentanyl poisoning and are calling for changes to state law that will allow prosecutors to crack down on dealers who knowingly sell a drug that's so potent, you can die from an amount equal to some grains of salt. 

In neighboring Riverside County, one father has been leading the charge.

After years, Alexandra's Law makes the ballot

Alexandra's Law is named after the daughter of Matt Capelouto, who authored the proposed legislation with Democratic California Sen. Tom Umberg. His daughter died from half a counterfeit fentanyl pill, which she thought was another prescription painkiller.

He has pushed for passage of the bill in the California Senate for over four years, and this year, it will be on the November ballot for California residents to vote on. It's part of a larger legislative package called the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act. 

On Friday, a news conference announcing its qualification for the ballot was held in downtown Los Angeles.

Currently, prosecution of drug dealers, even those selling fentanyl, is not a typical or easy feat for county-level prosecutors in California. That's because there's no state law for it. And California has no law classifying deaths from fentanyl as murder. 

Federal law does allow prosecuting drug dealers if they distribute a drug that results in injury or death.

Under Title 21, U.S. Code, Section 841, the distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death is punishable by a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life if convicted.

But with no such state law, prosecutors at the county level must prove implied malice or that a defendant sold something they knew would kill someone.

Defense lawyers have argued that pursuing such charges and convictions without a state law in place is unconstitutional and does not allow defendants due process. 

Capelouto said his approach is not overly punitive since it only applies to repeat offenders.

He has called for having convicted dealers receive a court-recorded admonishment from a judge upon a first fentanyl-related offense. If they are charged with another one later, which results in death, they face more severe charges, such as murder, since they were warned. The proposed bill, in its entirety, combines rehabilitative measures such as treatment and harsher criminal penalties for dealers. 

For Ochoa, the fact that fentanyl is so potent is what sets it apart from other substances when it comes to punishing dealers. Pretty much any other substance is just simply not as lethal.

"If you have four drinks at the bar, should you die from alcohol?" she said.

Her son, Ian, was the father of a 3-year-old daughter and a person who could "talk to you about anything," she said. He was taking college classes, working full-time and enjoyed spending time with his family. But he also struggled with substance use issues. 

"He was the most unjudgmental person you would ever meet," Ochoa said. "He was there for his child all the time, but he still had all these demons he was battling."

Capelouto started advocating for changes to how such death-related drug crimes are charged after his daughter, Alexandra, died at 20 years old. More than four years later, he still speaks about her in the present tense.

"I don't refer to her in the past tense. She's still my daughter," he said.

In December 2019, she returned home from Arizona State University, where she was enrolled on an academic scholarship, and visited her family in Temecula on winter break. Her father said she was bright and empathetic, but she also struggled with depression. 

During her visit, she took half a pill of what she thought was another prescription painkiller. It was a counterfeit fentanyl pill. 

"My wife found her in her bed dead the next morning," Capelouto said.

When it was ruled an accidental overdose, Capelouto went directly to the Riverside County District Attorney's Office to ask why it wasn't being treated as a homicide. "An overdose is when you take too much of something," he said. 

He said they found the other half of the pill inside her room. He pleaded with the prosecutor to do something. 

"We shared our story, and they agreed," he said. "They had just never really seen it explained this way."

County prosecutors in SoCal crack down

Riverside County DA Mike Hestrin told the New York Times earlier this year that his conversations with Capelouto led to a new approach to such cases. Hestrin told the Times that prosecutors would look at text messages to find evidence that a dealer knew what they were dealing, knew that it was lethal, and knowingly dealt it.

In August 2023, a jury convicted a Temecula fentanyl dealer of selling a pill that killed a 26-year-old woman. He was later sentenced to 15 years in prison. 

It was a landmark case prosecutors say was the first time in California a jury convicted a fentanyl dealer of murder.

"Today, our office has successfully provided justice to a victim's family by securing the first-ever guilty verdict by a jury in a fentanyl-related homicide trial in the state of California," DA Hestrin said at the time.

Since there's no state law resulting in murder charges for fentanyl deaths, some prosecutors have cited the Watson Murder rule, which is used in cases of drunk driving where someone causes a deadly crash after having prior DUI convictions. Alexandra's Law would make it court record that a defendant knows the lethal nature of fentanyl if they were previously convicted. 

Michael Duncan, the defense lawyer in that case, told the Times that such an application of a murder charge is unconstitutional and overly broad since there's no state law.

"The power to define the crime of murder belongs to the Legislature," Duncan told the Times. "Not to courts and not Mr. Hestrin's office."

Capelouto has said that's exactly why such a law is necessary. Last year, he rallied alongside the group Fathers Fighting Fentanyl during Father's Day weekend to advocate for Alexandra's Law and demand the attention and support of state policymakers.

A 2022 Kaiser Health News article about the new phenomenon, "The New MADD Movement: Parents Rise Up Against Drug Deaths," detailed Capelouto's and others parents' efforts. 

In Alexandra's case, despite some evidence, prosecutors found there was not enough to prove the dealer knew the pills were lethal and contained fentanyl. The case was handed over to a federal court, and the dealer received a 9-year sentence.

As fentanyl-related deaths continue to rise, more Southern California prosecutors are filing murder charges. 

This week, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced a murder charge against an accused fentanyl dealer allegedly tied to a death. The progressive prosecutor is not known for the heavy-handed approach to drug-related offenses that's seen from other Southern California prosecutors such as Hestrin.

"This is a deeply tragic case illustrating the heartbreaking consequences of opioid sales in our communities," Gascón said in a statement. "Our hearts go out to the victim's family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time."