SoCal man suspected of giving teen girlfriend fatal fentanyl dose arrested at U.S.-Mexico border

Law enforcement officials arrested a Riverside County man suspected of giving his then-17-year-old girlfriend a fatal fentanyl dose, taking him into custody at the U.S.-Mexico border two years after her death.

Michael Garcia, 23, is accused of supplying the highly potent drug to the teenager before she was found unresponsive on the morning of Aug. 21, 2022, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. Deputies found her in a bedroom after arriving to a home located in the 15000 block of Via Quedo in Desert Hot Springs just before 9 a.m.

Detectives identified Garcia as the suspect following several months of investigation, which led to a warrant being issued for his arrest. The U.S. Marshals Service and local law enforcement agencies assisted in tracking down and arresting him after investigators learned he may have fled to Mexico, sheriff's officials said. 

On Monday, Cathedral City police arrested him in El Centro, about 10 miles north of the border, before he was booked into John Benoit Detention Center in Indio on $75,000 bail, according to county inmate records. Investigators with the sheriff's department said he is being held on suspicion of unlawfully furnishing a controlled substance to a minor and felony child endangerment.

According to the sheriff's department, the Riverside County District Attorney's Office has filed criminal charges against Garcia.

In recent years, District Attorney Mike Hestrin has been one of the first county prosecutors in Southern California to file criminal charges against those accused of supplying fentanyl tied to deaths. It's a step a growing number of DAs in the region are taking, with prosecutors in Ventura and Los Angeles counties filing murder charges in fatal fentanyl cases for the first time this year.

Fentanyl has been blamed for a recent surge in U.S. drug deaths, with the number of Americans dying each year from it nearly doubling from 40,000 to almost 80,000 between 2019 and 2022, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It's described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as about 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin. 

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Sgt. Jim Peters at 951-486-6700 or Investigator Dan Shaffer at 951-955-1700.