California man identified as victim in first-of-its-kind criminal case

Seven months ago, Cindy Jacquet came home after running errands with her daughter to find her son's car parked in front of their driveway.

After noticing his brake lights were left on, she walked over to greet her 22-year-old son. 

"I just went up to say, hey," Cindy said. "He goes to the gym in the morning. I thought he had gone to the gym. He was dead when I got to the car."

On April 19, 2024, Cindy's son Bryce Jacquet allegedly bought pills from 21-year-old Benjamin Anthony Collins, a resident of Los Angeles County with a criminal history of dealing drugs, according to the Department of Justice. 

Bryce took some of the pills in the front seat of his car shortly after allegedly buying them from Collins. However, the drugs were laced with protonitazene, an illicit drug roughly three times stronger than fentanyl. Federal prosecutors said he quickly died in front of his family's home in Santa Clarita, just a few miles north of Los Angeles.

In the seven months following his death, the U.S. Attorney's Office has compiled evidence to prosecute the nation's first death-resulting criminal case involving the novel synthetic opioid. 

The Justice Department believes Bryce Jacquet's is the first recorded death-resulting criminal case involving protonitazene in the nation.   

"The federal government happened to see this case and has been working so hard for our son — and for other kids out there," Cindy said. "We are very appreciative."

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, fentanyl has become a household name after the synthetic opiate, typically used for surgery or for treating severe pain, accounted for about 68% of overdose deaths in the US in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

According to the Center of Forensic Science Research and Education, protonitazene entered the illicit drug market in North America around the time as fentanyl before May 2021. 

"We have a lot of nurses in our family who've never heard of it," father Andrew Jacquet said. "I have a niece that this is what she does for a living, [treating] addicts. She says it's the first time she's even heard of that [drug]."

With a potency 50 times stronger than heroin, fentanyl eventually entered the illicit drug market, commonly pressed into counterfeit pills, according to the CDC. Protonitazine is roughly three times more potent than fentanyl and 150 times stronger than heroin. 

"Fentanyl, that's the synthetic opioid that we all know of now," said retired special agent in charge Bill Bodner, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Los Angeles office. "We all relate to deaths caused by fentanyl. Protonitazine is three times more powerful than fentanyl."

Developed in the 1950s, protonitazene and the roughly 20 similar drugs in the "nitazenes" family act similarly to morphine and other opioids. However, they were never approved for distribution in the US market. 

"Why were these drugs never approved by the FDA?" asked Bodner. "Because one of the reasons is, they're just too strong. There's really no need for a drug that strong. There's no legitimate medical use for these drugs. These drugs, they've been scheduled as Schedule 1 drugs, meaning they're highly restricted in the United States."

The federal government uses the practice of scheduling to categorize drugs based on the abuse rate. Protonitazene lands at the top of the scale with other Schedule 1 drugs which have a high potential for abuse and could create severe psychological and physical dependence. 

"We started to see it in 2021," said Bodner, who retired from the DEA in 2023. "In 2022, the government scheduled it. "They did an emergency scheduling. Basically, to put everyone on notice that this is an extremely dangerous drug. It's illegal."

In a study published in August 2024, the DEA stated that nitazenes have not been approved for medical use anywhere in the world. As of August 2023, scientists identified 20 deaths in the US and the United Kingdom attributed to protonitazene.

"It's here. It's on our streets," Bodner said. "There are several drugs that you'll hear of, unfortunately, over the next six months and next two years, that will have 'nitazene' at the end of them."

The Jacquets hope Bodner's prediction doesn't come true. 

"It can't just start with these little drug dealers that sold my son a drug," Andrew Jacquet said. "They got to figure out where this stuff is coming from. They got to deal with it like it's terrorism, because it's ruining families in America."