Mother who lost son to fentanyl fights to keep known dealer behind bars: "I'm not finished"
Kim Osterman lost her oldest son, Max, just over two years ago to fentanyl.
Every day since has been spent digging into what happened.
"I'm not finished," she said.
A digital paper trail after his death including text messages, banking receipts even surveillance video helped identify the man behind that sale and in February of 2021, police began investigating a suspect named, Sergio Guerra Carrillo.
"He has had multiple arrests and drug charges previous to my son's death and after my son's death," Osterman said.
The following year in January 2022, while being investigated for Max's death, Guerra-Carrillo was arrested for a separate distribution charge.
Months later as Osterman was learning from the Adams County district attorney there would be no charges filed in her son's death Carrillo was given a plea deal.
"I had an opportunity to speak at his sentencing I said he's a danger to our community he's a repeat offender and give him the sentence that he is pleading guilty to but they gave him the three years' probation," she said.
It took just a few months before Guerra-Carrillo was arrested again. Court documents obtained by CBS News Colorado, reveal the DEA was investigating him the whole time. Tipped off in May of 2022 that he was looking for a truck driver to bring narcotics into Colorado from the southern border.
The arrest papers show while being offered probation he was setting up drug deals with an undercover agent.
"While he sold that to the DEA, how much else how many more drugs was he selling how many more lives has he is taking?" Osterman asked.
Those documents also include reports from the North Metro Drug task force detailing a buy they set up with Guerra-Carrillo in 2018.
He was given probation in that case as well, years before Max's death.
"My son very well might be here today, if Sergio had been put away as he should have been," she said.
Now in Jail in Adams County, Guerra-Carrillo's cellmate overdosed on fentanyl.
While being questioned he told admitted to the deputy he was dealing fentanyl before he was locked up and allegedly connected to four overdose deaths.
Osterman says she hopes this time it will be enough to keep him behind bars.
"Time will tell," she said.
CBS News Colorado reached out to the Adams County District Attorney's Office for comment on the multiple arrests of this suspect and didn't provide a response due to the case being open.
Regarding Osterman's death, they sent the same statement from the sentencing last July, that discusses the difficulty in proving distribution resulting in death related specifically to fentanyl.
DAs across the state say they are having difficulty bringing that charge when other substances are found in a person's system and are now trying to change the law to allow for charges against a dealer connected to a death - with any substance.
