Man sentenced after distributing fentanyl that led to Bellingham boy’s overdose death
A 22-year-old Mount Vernon man was sentenced to more than eight years in prison Friday for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl in Whatcom and Skagit counties that led to two overdoses, including the death of a Bellingham 17-year-old in 2019.
Jiovanni Nunez was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 100 months in prison and four years of supervised release for conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release Oct. 15. Nunez pleaded guilty to the charge in June.
“Far too many people are dying from these fentanyl tainted pills — especially the young and vulnerable,” U.S. Attorney Nicholas W. Brown said in the news release. “It is critical that we not only stem the flow of the drugs into our community, but also remind people that using these pills often leads to death and devastation, with families left to mourn.”
Nunez is the second person to plead guilty and be sentenced for distributing counterfeit oxycodone pills tainted with fentanyl, joining co-conspirator Rosaliana Lopez-Rodriguez, 23, of Mount Vernon, who was sentenced to 84 months in prison in August, after she pleaded guilty to charges in her case in January.
Both have been in custody since their arrest in late 2019.
The victim’s mother told the court Friday that her son’s death left “a big hole of grief we carry that nothing can fill,” according to the release.
Nunez and Lopez-Rodriguez were arrested, and on Dec. 4, 2019, they were charged with possession of narcotics with intent to distribute.
According to court records in the case, the Bellingham boy was found unresponsive on Nov. 9, 2019, and, despite emergency responders’ efforts to resuscitate him, he died. His cause of death was determined to be a fentanyl overdose.
Investigators found a whole and a partial pill near the victim, the release states, and the pills were designed to look like oxycodone 30-milligram pills, with an “M” and “30” stamped on them. But the pills were tainted with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50- to 100-times more potent than morphine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Similar pills had been linked to other overdoses and deaths in the Puget Sound region, according to the news release, including a 17-year-old friend of the Bellingham victim, who nearly died after smoking one of the pills Nov. 1, 2019.
Lopez-Rodriguez knew of that near-fatal overdose when she sold the victim the pills eight days later, the news release states.
Law enforcement found 2½ fentanyl pills in Lopez-Rodriguez’s bedroom, according to the release, and at Nunez’ home they found a safe containing hundreds of fake oxycodone pills that matched the appearance of the fentanyl-laced pills linked to the Bellingham boy’s death.
Lopez-Rodriguez said that Nunez provided her with the pills that led to the boy’s death, documents state.
The Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office, Drug Enforcement Administration, Whatcom County Drug and Gang Task Force, Bellingham Police Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations investigated the case.
This story was originally published October 15, 2021 at 3:36 PM.
