Man accused of trafficking enough fentanyl to kill millions released without bond ahead of trial
Federal prosecutors are appealing a decision to release Larry Phillips, an accused fentanyl trafficker, without bond before his trial.
Phillips was arrested at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport with six kilograms of fentanyl, which prosecutors say is enough to potentially kill millions.
“A defendant accused of trafficking this quantity of fentanyl should not have been released,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg.
Phillips was released by a U.S. Magistrate Judge without having to post any money, despite a federal prosecutor’s request for detention without bond.
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The prosecution argues that Phillips poses a flight risk and a danger to the community, citing the large quantity of fentanyl involved and his lack of legitimate employment.
A co-conspirator, Rashad Davis, was arrested in Phoenix with eight kilograms of fentanyl, bringing the total to 14 kilograms with an estimated street value of $700,000.
The prosecution’s court filing also highlights concerns about Phillips’ possession of firearms and the uncertainty surrounding the location of his vehicle.
The defense has filed a response indicating that Phillips has secured employment and has strong family and community ties, arguing against the government’s motion to detain him.
Hertzberg said Phillips has pleaded not guilty, and he anticipates Davis will too.
The U.S. military started attacking boats off the coast of Venezuela on Sept. 2, killing 17 people in what leaders say is an effort to thwart drug smuggling.
“A lot of drugs are coming out of Venezuela,” Trump said Sept. 14. “Venezuela is sending us their gang members, their drug dealers and drugs.”
On Sept. 20, Trump said, “Thousands of people are dying because of those boatloads of drugs, fentanyl and a lot of other drugs.”
Trump has focused on Venezuela in his second presidency. In March, while invoking an 18th century deportation law, Trump said Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro has directed Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, to use warlike actions against the U.S., including drug trafficking. In late August, the U.S. deployed warships to the waters off Venezuela, and on Sept. 15, Trump added Venezuela to the United State’s annual list of major drug transit and production countries.
“In Venezuela, the criminal regime of indicted drug trafficker Nicolás Maduro leads one of the largest cocaine trafficking networks in the world, and the United States will continue to seek to bring Maduro and other members of his complicit regime to justice for their crimes,” the official determination said.
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Experts in crime, drugs and Venezuela say the South American country plays a minor role in trafficking drugs that reach the U.S.
“The reality is that while Maduro’s government is an authoritarian corrupt regime, drug trafficking from Venezuela is relatively minor compared to other countries in the region such as Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico,” said David Smilde, a Tulane University sociologist who studies violence in Venezuela.
Phil Gunson, senior analyst for the Andes Region at International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution think tank, said the Trump administration has conflated several situations to reach the conclusion that a cartel runs Venezuela in order to justify U.S. military action. An April U.S. intelligence reportcast doubt on the notion that Tren de Aragua is run by Maduro.
“For all the many sins of the Maduro dictatorship, there is no evidence to suggest that it is engaged in a war of terror against the US, or that it is using drugs and violent criminals to undermine the US government,” Gunson said.
What has the Trump administration said about why it has struck Venezuelan boats?
Trump announced Sept. 2 that the U.S. military had struck a vessel in the southern Caribbean, killing 11 people on board. He said the military had identified the people on board as “Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists.”
The State Department designated Tren de Aragua a terrorist organization in February.
InSight Crime, a think tank focused on crime and security in the Americas, said in a September report that it found “no evidence to date that Tren de Aragua is involved in transnational drug trafficking.” The gang’s criminal activities center on human smuggling and trafficking, extortion and “micro-trafficking,” the selling of drugs in neighborhoods where the gang has a foothold.
Therefore it’s “exceedingly unlikely” that the people killed in the U.S. boat strikes are Tren de Aragua members, Smilde told PolitiFact.
The government hasn’t provided evidence about the boats’ passengers or contents.
“All you have to do is look at the cargo that was spattered all over the ocean, big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place,” Trump told reporters about the second boat.
Bags of drugs are not clearly visible in aerialvideo Trump has shared on Truth Social of the first two strikes.
PolitiFact asked the White House for its evidence that Venezuela was sending drugs to the U.S and that the boats were carrying drugs. The White House did not respond with evidence.
The White House also did not answer questions about what drugs Venezuela is sending to the U.S. or how many drugs seized in the U.S. come from Venezuela.
After the first attack, some legal experts told PolitiFact that the military action was illegal under maritime law or human rights conventions and the attack contradicted longstanding U.S. military practices.
Does fentanyl in the U.S. come from Venezuela? Drug trafficking experts say no.
Most U.S. overdose deaths are because of fentanyl, a synthetic, often deadly opioid frequently present in illicit street drugs.
Most illicit fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Mexico, not Venezuela, and is made with chemicals from Chinese labs. It enters the U.S. mainly through the southern border at official ports of entry, and it’s smuggled in mostly by U.S. citizens.
“There is no evidence of fentanyl or cocaine laced with fentanyl coming from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America,” Smilde said.
U.S. fentanyl overdose deaths recently have dropped. From May 2024 to April 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 43,000 synthetic opioid deaths, most of which were from fentanyl, down from nearly 70,000 in the previous similar period.
“The United States has been suffering an enormous overdose crisis driven by opioids and fentanyl in particular in recent years,” said John Walsh, director for drug policy and the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, a group advocating for human rights in the Americas. “I would say it has zero to do with anything in South America or the Caribbean.”
What role does Venezuela play in trafficking cocaine to the U.S.?
Venezuela acts as a transit country for some cocaine trafficking in part because its neighboring country, Colombia, is the world’s main cocaine producer. However, most of the cocaine that enters the U.S. doesn’t go through Venezuela, Gunson said. Instead, it takes a more direct route.
Cocaine bound for the U.S. tends to leave Colombia via its Pacific coast, through Central America and Mexico, Smilde said. Venezuela is east of Colombia on the Atlantic Ocean.
A 2024 DEA fact-sheet says 90% of cocaine reaching the U.S. is produced in Colombia and enters the U.S. via Mexico. The report doesn’t mention Venezuela.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro talks to high-ranking officers during a military ceremony on his inauguration day for a third term in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP)
What role does Maduro play in drug trafficking?
In August, the U.S. State and Justice departments increased the reward for Maduro’s arrest to $50 million.
“For over a decade, Maduro has been a leader of Cartel de los Soles, which is responsible for trafficking drugs into the United States,” the news release said. In July, the Department of Treasury designated Cartel de los Soles a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization.
Cartel de los Soles isn’t a literal, concrete or hierarchical drug-trafficking organization. It describes a “system of corruption wherein military and political officials profit by working with drug traffickers,” InSight Crime said in an Aug. 1 report. For example, military officials might protect drug traffickers from arrests or ensure their drug shipments are able to get through.
The name Cartel de los Soles is a decades-old “tongue-in-cheek way of referring to the true fact that military officials were involved in drug trafficking,” Smilde said. “Soles” means sun, and Venezuelan military uniforms have suns instead of stars.
Experts said the Venezuelan government tolerates illicit activities, including drug-trafficking, in exchange for officers’ political loyalty, because the government can’t pay them adequate salaries.
But to use that evidence to say “Maduro or any other government official is the head of a drug cartel is false or at minimum stretches these words beyond recognition,” Smilde said.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “America Loves Cocaine Again—Mexico’s New Drug King Cashes In.” It’s a detailed account of the return of cocaine amid a recent drop in fentanyl use by Americans. “Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers,” according to the article. The drug has seen a 154 percent increase in consumption since 2019.
For a variety of reasons, the U.S. is the most significant illicit drug market in the world, with the most drug users. Though 45 percent of Americans describe the problem of drugs in the U.S. as “extremely serious,” drug use is a growing trend. About 25 percent of Americans reported past-year use of “illicit drugs” in 2024—an increase of three percentage points since 2021—according to the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Many Americans have gone from tolerance of psychoactive drug use to active participation at scale, and demand is edging up. However, public drug use and the rise in fentanyl overdoses in cities such as Portland, San Francisco, and Baltimore have spurred public outcry. Given that the country’s annual drug overdose death rate doubled between 2015 and 2023, it makes sense that 52 percent of Americans feel the U.S. is “losing ground on the illegal drug problem,” according to a Gallup poll.
It appears the president agrees. On September 15, President Donald Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account showing U.S. forces killing three people during the destruction of another alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. Two weeks ago, a similar strike killed 11 people on a vessel the Trump administration alleged belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
While the president has justified these strikes as a necessary escalation against “extremely violent drug trafficking cartels” that he claims “POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests,” data indicate that drug trafficking, like drug use, is predominantly a domestic issue.
Out of 12,004 nationwide drug trafficking convictions, 78 percent (9,362) involved U.S. citizens, according to the Cato Institute. The trend remains even in regions along the Southwest border, typically seen as cartel havens, where U.S. citizens account for nearly 72 percent of drug trafficking convictions. Similarly, in the Gulf of Mexico and districts along the Caribbean, U.S. citizens account for 68 percent of convicted drug traffickers.
In July, the president signed the HALT Fentanyl Act, which permanently classifies fentanyl-related substances as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. The president has repeatedly cited fentanyl trafficking as justification for his positions on tariffs and immigration. However, most of the fentanyl seizures by U.S. authorities happen at legal ports of entry, and data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission show 86 percent of those sentenced for trafficking fentanyl were U.S. citizens.
Given the data on who’s doing the trafficking and the president’s frank statement to Fox News that “you’ll never really solve the drug problem unless you do what other countries do, and that’s the death penalty for drug dealers,” it’s understandable to question the effects on Americans of this escalation in the war on drugs. Only a few countries carry out executions for drug trafficking offenses; the list includes human rights luminaries like Singapore, Malaysia, Iran, and Brunei.
Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, David Bier, describes the president’s legal authority for the strikes as fictitious. “If this is an act of war, then Congress must authorize it under the Constitution,” says Bier. “But it’s not an act of war since the combatants are defined by their criminal violations of U.S.-controlled substances laws, and the law spells out the consequences for those offenses. Moreover, the president is…intentionally killing the people on the boats, which shows that this isn’t about the substances being trafficked, but rather illegally raising the penalty for drug trafficking to capital punishment.”
For decades, the U.S. spent billions exporting the same extrajudicial method of drug control recently carried out by the Trump administration, without credible evidence of a dent in domestic drug consumption.
Since most traffickers to the U.S. are citizens, killing suspects at sea is a hollow show—attacking supply while ignoring the demand that fuels it.
Drugs seized by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office
TROUTDALE, Ore. — Investigators with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) Dangerous Drug Team have seized approximately seven pounds of fentanyl as part of an ongoing investigation into drug trafficking in the area.
The bust marks the second major fentanyl seizure by the team in just one week.
On Tuesday, September 9, officers served a search warrant at an apartment in Troutdale and later searched a nearby vehicle. Both locations yielded fentanyl in pill and powder form, along with equipment commonly used in drug manufacturing.
Among the items recovered were a large metal pill press and respirator masks — tools typically used to process and package fentanyl for distribution. Investigators say evidence suggests the suspects were involved in cutting, weighing, pressing, and packaging the drugs for sale.
“The work of the Sheriff’s Office Dangerous Drug Team is critical to disrupting the illegal manufacture and trafficking of dangerous drugs,” said Sheriff Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell. “I am very proud of the positive impact our investigators have.”
The Dangerous Drug Team is a multi-agency task force supported by the Oregon-Idaho High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program. It includes members from the MCSO, Gresham Police Department, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and analysts from the Oregon National Guard. The investigation also received support from Multnomah County’s Department of Community Justice Adult Services Division.
Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, the specific location of the apartment has not been released.
Cayden Foster, Sean and Afrodita’s only child, died of a fentanyl overdose in early 2023. Now, the parents are working with schools and police to prevent similar tragedies.
This story is Part 2 of WTOP’s four-part series, “Fighting Fentanyl” which explores how the drug is impacting students, families and schools in the D.C. area.
When Sean and Afrodita Foster prepare to speak to Loudoun County Public Schools students about the dangers of fentanyl, the kids anticipate “another boring assembly.”
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Va. couple who lost their son is raising awareness to make sure nobody has to feel their pain
But instead, students share.
“This is exactly what we needed to hear. We had no idea that these pills were as dangerous as they were,” Sean Foster said.
There’s one student, though, who didn’t get that message in time.
Cayden Foster, Sean and Afrodita’s only child, died of a fentanyl overdose in early 2023 at 18 years old. Afrodita found him dead in his bed one morning when he should have been getting ready for school.
Sean said his son’s death had left him and his wife without purpose, but now, their mission is to make sure other parents don’t have to feel their pain.
“We don’t want this to happen to anybody else,” Afrodita said. “I want to believe that if there would have been more awareness at the time, around the time when this happened with Cayden, our son, that it might have not happened.”
Sharing their stories to other students
She and her husband have spoken to thousands of Loudoun County Public School students, as part of programming that brings community members into schools. They also communicate with college students and stay in touch with the Fairfax County Police Department’s overdose task force.
Sometimes, after a presentation, school officials follow up with small group classroom discussions to debrief. The feedback from students has been positive, and many kids have opened up about their experiences with drugs.
One student had heard about fake blue Percocet pills, which were found in Cayden’s wallet at the time of his death, but shared that’s the reason they take Xanax. It gave Sean the opportunity to explain that if pills aren’t from a prescription bottle, they’re likely fake.
In other cases, the assembly has led students to approach school counselors with concerns about their friends.
“We stress that, in Cayden’s case, if one person would have said something to us that he was hanging out with these people, or that night, it was preventable,” Afrodita said. “But nobody said anything.”
‘You’ve got an obligation to say something’
Cayden Foster’s parents, Sean and Afrodita, stand in front of posters and flowers given to them by Cayden’s peers following his death. (WTOP/Scott Gelman)
The Fosters remain in touch with Cayden’s friends, who are now in college. When they come back to their hometowns for breaks, the Fosters continue to warn them about fentanyl. Some of the students describe seeing cocaine use on college campuses across the country.
“We keep on stressing that you don’t know where that deadly amount of fentanyl is,” Afrodita said. “You can be first, you can be last. It can be your first time, your third time, but it can get you. Just don’t trust anybody with your life.”
They also rely on Fairfax County police’s overdose task force to learn about the latest trends. Officials told them that, along with pills, powder is getting mixed into substances, such as cocaine and marijuana. They’ve testified before state lawmakers too.
After learning new information about Cayden’s death about a year ago, the couple has tweaked their messaging. They found out Cayden was on FaceTime with someone when he started going into respiratory distress, and that person looped in another friend.
“They essentially watched him die and didn’t do anything. Even more so in our messaging is, you’ve got an obligation to say something to your friend, who thinks you’re their friend,” Sean said.
Cayden’s parking spot at Centreville High School has been retired, so nobody else can park there. Last year, students painted on it. The Fosters placed a binder there with Cayden’s story inside, as one last reminder.
“We just try to speak to as many students and adults — so that they can speak to their children — as we can,” Afrodita said. “That’s the only thing we can do.”
In Part 3 ofWTOP’s “Fighting Fentanyl” series, schools and community groups warn about emerging substances.
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Overdoses among young people appear to be falling across the D.C. region since schools tackled the issue with education and Narcan training, according to a WTOP analysis of local data.
This story is Part 1 of WTOP’s four-part series, “Fighting Fentanyl” which explores how the drug is impacting students, families and schools in the D.C. area.
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Opioid overdoses are declining across DC region. What’s behind the trend?
It’s been over two years since a large group gathered outside Wakefield High School holding colorful signs.
They had messages in both English and Spanish, hoping to show support to students at the Arlington, Virginia, school. Some hoped for increased security and new rules. The event came days after Sergio Flores, a student at the school, was suspected to have overdosed in a school bathroom in early 2023. He later died.
The incident prompted Arlington Public Schools leaders to change their approach in response to a troubling rise in youth overdoses. They allowed students to carry Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal medication, and emphasized to students just how dangerous substance use can be.
It’s been a few years since school districts across the D.C. region started hosting community meetings, having teachers and other staff trained in how to administer Narcan, and educating students about the dangers of opioids and other drugs at a younger age. Now, overdoses among young people appear to be falling, according to a WTOP analysis of local data.
“The global altitude of this crisis has really affected so many people that students in our classrooms are going to know somebody who’s been affected by the opioid crisis,” said Jenny Sexton, a substance abuse counselor in Arlington Public Schools. “So helping them understand the data and how that connects them to the reality of this happening right in their hometown.”
That approach has produced positive results. There were 11 juvenile overdoses, two of which were fatal, in Arlington in 2023, according to police data. There were two overdoses overall, both nonfatal, last year. As of this summer, there haven’t been any in 2025.
Staff members in Arlington are trained on administering naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal medication, and students hear about substances as young as third grade. The division hosts community presentations and distributed Narcan to parents in drop-off lines twice last year at high schools.
The biggest challenge, Sexton said, was getting people not to fear Narcan.
“The initial concern was causing harm to someone,” Sexton said. “‘What if I hurt somebody by giving it to them?’ Or what if it doesn’t work? Am I liable for that?’”
Nearby Fairfax County is reporting similarly positive trends. There weren’t any fatal overdoses among kids 17 and younger last year, down from five in 2023. There weren’t any overdoses that occurred during school hours or school-sanctioned activities last year either, compared to six during what the district considered its peak year.
However, it remains a challenge. In a message to families last week, superintendent Michelle Reid said a student in the West Springfield community died of an overdose outside of school.
“It’s still a problem, in the sense that there are still youth who use fentanyl, and fentanyl continues to be the primary opioid responsible for fatal and nonfatal overdoses in Fairfax County,” said Michael Axler, Fairfax County Public Schools’ director of intervention and prevention services. “However, holistically, we’re definitely seeing that fewer youth are being impacted by fentanyl, certainly in the calendar year 2024 compared to 2023.”
Virginia’s largest school district keeps naloxone in every school, AED cabinet and clinic, and Axler said there are expanded treatment options for young people. All staff, including athletic coaches and trainers and security personnel, are trained to administer naloxone, and school leaders helped parents learn how to talk to their kids about the sensitive issue.
“We always have to remember that we’re dealing with people, and so if we say we’ve reduced it by 30%, there’s still a percentage who are being affected by it,” Axler said.
Meanwhile, it’s been over two years since a cluster of suspected overdoses involving Loudoun County Public Schools students prompted Gov. Glenn Youngkin to issue an executive order on the subject. The move outlined a time requirement for school systems to notify parents of a suspected overdose.
In 2023, there were 22 juvenile overdoses in the county, according to sheriff’s department data. In 2024, there were six. So far this year, there have been two, including one fatal overdose.
In Loudoun, students hear from families who have lost loved ones to an overdose. All staff are trained to administer Naloxone, and students can carry it with a parent’s permission. The district boosted the number of student assistant specialists, who have an expertise in substance use and assessment, and boosted parent engagement.
“It was coming in here manufactured, and kids weren’t realizing what they were getting,” said Jennifer Evans, Loudoun County schools’ director of student mental health services. “And I do think the pharmaceutical companies have a role in that, and what they were prescribing, or how much they’re prescribing, and families have a role in that, locking up medication so kids can’t get to it. So there’s so many layers to that, but I do think there was a lack of information about fentanyl out there.”
In D.C., there have been 276 deadly overdoses among all ages in the last 12 months, compared to 479 in the previous 12, according to data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Ginny Atwood, co-founder of the Fairfax-based Chris Atwood Foundation, said naloxone becoming available over the counter and improved access to treatment for opioid-use disorder have likely helped contribute to the declines.
“A lot of times if somebody revives a friend, they’re not going to the state to report the overdose reversal. So we really, truly don’t have a very good idea of how many people are surviving overdoses behind closed doors,” Atwood said.
“It’s still a problem,” Atwood said. “It’s still something we should be talking about.”
In Part 2 ofWTOP’s “Fighting Fentanyl” series, a couple from Fairfax County speaks out after losing their son to an overdose.
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On Wednesday, a judge sentenced Phyu Win Jame to spend two years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release.
Prosecutors accused the defendants of traveling from the Twin Cities to Phoenix in 2022 to buy synthetic drugs and then mailing the pills back to multiple metro spots inside of Squishmallows plush toys. Investigators say 280,000 pills, estimated to be valued at more than $2 million and equaling more than 30,000 grams, were seized in the bust.
Initially, charges were filed against six people, but that number increased in March of 2024, when Jame, as well as Da’Shawn Natori Domena and Amaya Tiffany-Nicole Mims were alleged to have a role in the ring. The six people initially charged are Cornell Chandler Jr., Shardai Allen, Quijuan Bankhead, Stardasha Davenport-Mounger, Fo’Tre White and Robiel Williams.
All of the defendants have pleaded guilty, and more than half have been sentenced.
A woman is in custody on suspected drug offenses after police were called to a Minneapolis home during the overnight hours Saturday for a baby who wasn’t breathing.
According to Minneapolis police, the call came in just after 1 a.m. The caller said a baby wasn’t breathing at a home on the 1600 block of First Avenue South.
When officers arrived, they found an 8-month-old child who wasn’t responsive. The baby was then brought to Hennepin Healthcare by ambulance. As of this writing, the infant’s condition hasn’t been released.
Although a forensics team and investigators were brought to the home due to a potential fentanyl exposure, the reason for the baby’s medical emergency hasn’t been determined.
No details about the woman who was arrested have been provided at this time.
Former Mexican cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty Monday to U.S. drug trafficking charges, saying he was sorry for helping to flood the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances and for fueling deadly violence in Mexico.“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people of the United States, of Mexico, and elsewhere,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I take responsibility for my role in all of it and I apologize to everyone who has suffered or been affected by my actions.”Under the leadership of Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel evolved from a regional player into the largest drug trafficking organization in the world, prosecutors say.“Culpable,” Zambada said, using the Spanish word for “guilty,” as he entered his plea.He acknowledged the extent of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, oversaw the importation of cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and the smuggling of the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and military commanders “so they could operate freely,” going all the way back to when the cartel was just starting out.Zambada was arrested in Texas last year. He entered his plea two weeks after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty against him, a development that his attorney has called an important step in resolving the case.The lawyer, Frank Perez, said outside court Monday that “the outcome was good,” adding that Zambada “wanted to accept responsibility, and he did.”Zambada, 77, is due to be sentenced Jan. 13 to life in prison.He traced his involvement in the illegal drug business to his teenage years, when — after leaving school with a sixth-grade education — he planted marijuana for the first time in 1969. He said he went on to sell heroin and other drugs, but especially cocaine. From 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States,” he said.Prosecutors said in his indictment that he and the cartel also trafficked in fentanyl and methamphetamine.Considered a good negotiator, Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker who was more involved in its day-to-day doings than the more flamboyant Guzmán. Nevertheless, prosecutors have said Zambada also was enmeshed in the group’s violence, at one point ordering the murder of his own nephew.Zambada pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise between 1989 and 2024 and racketeering conspiracy, which encompasses involvement in a number of crimes from 2000 to 2012.Prosecutors say he presided over a violent, highly militarized cartel with a private security force armed with powerful weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture. He acknowledged in his plea that he “directed people under my control to kill others” to serve the cartel’s interests.“Many innocent people were also killed,” he said in an eight-minute address to the court Monday.Zambada appeared momentarily unsteady as he arrived in a Brooklyn federal courtroom; a marshal grabbed his arm to direct him to his seat among his attorneys at the defense table.As Judge Brian M. Cogan described the charges in Zambada’s plea agreement, the bearded ex-Sinaloa boss sat attentively, at times brushing his right hand through his white hair.Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the same federal court in Brooklyn in 2019.The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest criminal group, with various incarnations dating to the 1970s. It is a drug trafficking power player: A former Mexican cabinet member was convicted of taking bribes to help the cartel.U.S. law enforcement sought Zambada for more than two decades, but he was never arrested in any country until he arrived in Texas last year on a private plane with one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded guilty last month.Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken against his will to the U.S.Zambada’s arrest touched off deadly fighting in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos — a term that translates to “little Chapos.”Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed.
Former Mexican cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty Monday to U.S. drug trafficking charges, saying he was sorry for helping to flood the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and other illicit substances and for fueling deadly violence in Mexico.
“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people of the United States, of Mexico, and elsewhere,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I take responsibility for my role in all of it and I apologize to everyone who has suffered or been affected by my actions.”
Under the leadership of Zambada and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the Sinaloa cartel evolved from a regional player into the largest drug trafficking organization in the world, prosecutors say.
“Culpable,” Zambada said, using the Spanish word for “guilty,” as he entered his plea.
He acknowledged the extent of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, oversaw the importation of cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and the smuggling of the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and military commanders “so they could operate freely,” going all the way back to when the cartel was just starting out.
Zambada was arrested in Texas last year. He entered his plea two weeks after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty against him, a development that his attorney has called an important step in resolving the case.
The lawyer, Frank Perez, said outside court Monday that “the outcome was good,” adding that Zambada “wanted to accept responsibility, and he did.”
Zambada, 77, is due to be sentenced Jan. 13 to life in prison.
He traced his involvement in the illegal drug business to his teenage years, when — after leaving school with a sixth-grade education — he planted marijuana for the first time in 1969. He said he went on to sell heroin and other drugs, but especially cocaine. From 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States,” he said.
Prosecutors said in his indictment that he and the cartel also trafficked in fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Considered a good negotiator, Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker who was more involved in its day-to-day doings than the more flamboyant Guzmán. Nevertheless, prosecutors have said Zambada also was enmeshed in the group’s violence, at one point ordering the murder of his own nephew.
Zambada pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise between 1989 and 2024 and racketeering conspiracy, which encompasses involvement in a number of crimes from 2000 to 2012.
Prosecutors say he presided over a violent, highly militarized cartel with a private security force armed with powerful weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture. He acknowledged in his plea that he “directed people under my control to kill others” to serve the cartel’s interests.
“Many innocent people were also killed,” he said in an eight-minute address to the court Monday.
Zambada appeared momentarily unsteady as he arrived in a Brooklyn federal courtroom; a marshal grabbed his arm to direct him to his seat among his attorneys at the defense table.
As Judge Brian M. Cogan described the charges in Zambada’s plea agreement, the bearded ex-Sinaloa boss sat attentively, at times brushing his right hand through his white hair.
Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the same federal court in Brooklyn in 2019.
The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest criminal group, with various incarnations dating to the 1970s. It is a drug trafficking power player: A former Mexican cabinet member was convicted of taking bribes to help the cartel.
U.S. law enforcement sought Zambada for more than two decades, but he was never arrested in any country until he arrived in Texas last year on a private plane with one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded guilty last month.
Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken against his will to the U.S.
Zambada’s arrest touched off deadly fighting in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos — a term that translates to “little Chapos.”
Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed.
DENVER — Denver Health is sharing the stories of patients and support specialists to ease the stigma surrounding fentanyl use and, in turn, reduce overdose deaths.
According to data from the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE), as of July 10, there have been 320 confirmed overdose deaths so far this year. Of those, 213 cases involved fentanyl.
During the same period last year (Jan. 1 through July 10, 2024), there were 275 confirmed overdose deaths in Denver.
Denver Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE)
“Really, the age range is everything from 9 years old to 90. That is not an exaggeration, we have patients at either end of the spectrum,” Sarah Christensen, medical director of outpatient substance use disorders at Denver Health, said about the patients she sees who have been impacted by fentanyl. “They’re a variety of backgrounds. No one is immune; no one is protected. Coming from a good family or having money doesn’t stop you from experiencing this.”
Denver Health’s Center for Addiction Medicine helps people navigate recovery. Outside of the building are rows of small purple windmills, recognizing the lives lost to substance abuse.
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Christensen said the community, whether they’re impacted by substance use disorder or not, can help reduce overdose deaths through awareness and empathy. She recommends that people carry naloxone so they can intervene if they see someone experiencing an overdose.
“I recommend to everybody to have that with you,” said Christensen. “Actually, I have it with me in my purse.”
Naloxone, also known by the brand name NARCAN, is a medication that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose and can be given as a nasal spray or an injection. The medication is safe and easy to use, not only by trained professionals but also by bystanders.
Nasal spray naloxone is available at pharmacies or through various vending machines and resource centers across Denver.
“An overdose might mean that someone has taken so much that they are no longer conscious,” Chistensen said. “What we really worry about is when they stop breathing.”
Denver Health created a video demonstrating how to administer naloxone. You can watch it in the video player below
If your loved one is experiencing substance use disorder, Christensen said the best way to approach the situation is with compassion.
“Being able to say, ‘Whatever’s happening, I love you, I’m still going to love you, and I’m here when you’re ready and I would love for you to get help,’” she said.
In an effort to reduce the stigma surrounding fentanyl use, Denver Health is highlighting the stories of people impacted by opioids and overdoses through an exhibit titled “Stories in Black and White.”
According to Denver Health, “patients, peer support specialists, and advisory members for the Center for Addiction Medicine’s Community Advisory Meeting shared these stories in partnership with the CDC Foundation’s Overdose Response Strategy Program.”
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“We hope these stories encourage more dialogue and less stigma about how people from all walks of life can get the support they need when they are ready,” Denver Health wrote.
The exhibit will be at Civic Center Park near Broadway and 14th Avenue on Sept. 1 between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. It will then be showcased at the Denver Central Public Library on Sept. 4 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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When federal agencies recognize an “awareness day” for something, that’s code for: “Take this seriously. Please.”
Deaths from fentanyl — the synthetic, often deadly opioid frequently present in illicit street drugs — have contributed to the United States’ soaring opioid overdose deaths in the last decade.
In 2022, the advocacy group Facing Fentanyl designated Aug. 21 “National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day,” to honor the people who have died from fentanyl and to increase public awareness of its toll. Today, a number of federalagencies mark the day as well.
Fentanyl overdose deaths have recently dropped. From April 2024 to March 2025, the CDC reported 43,000 synthetic opioid deaths, most of which are from fentanyl, down from nearly 70,000 in the previous similar period.
You probably already know this part: Even tiny amounts of fentanyl can be lethal. But we’ve come across a fair number of myths about fentanyl over the years. Knowing the facts about this potent drug can help save lives. Here’s some quick must-knows and common myths.
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Two milligrams of fentanyl can be deadly: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says that ingesting as little as 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be deadly for an adult. The drug is similar to morphine, but up to 100 times more potent, which is what makes it so lethal.
Different people can tolerate different doses, but it’s hard to know how much is in a pill: A dose’s lethality can vary based on height, weight and tolerance from past exposure. So a frequent opioid user may tolerate a higher dose than a first time user. A DEA analysis found dosages can vary widely from one pill to another.
Fentanyl can be added to other illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine: Because of its potency and low cost, fentanyl is frequently used to “cut” other illicit drugs, including heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. As a result, people may unknowingly take a drug that contains fentanyl in potentially lethal amounts.
Medical fentanyl can be prescribed by a doctor: A pharmaceutical form of fentanyl can be safely prescribed by doctors to treat severe pain after surgery or in the late stages of cancer. It is used similarly to morphine but in smaller doses. It can be administered through a shot, a patch on the skin or a lozenge.
Street fentanyl is not the same as medical fentanyl: Illicit fentanyl, the kind sold illegally on the street, is not regulated like the kind that doctors give. It is made in clandestine labs and the exact dosage is not always reliable. Illicit fentanyl is most closely associated with overdose deaths. According to the DEA, illicit fentanyl can be sold as a powder, pill or nasal spray.
Fentanyl test strips can show if a drug has been laced: But they cannot tell you how much of the opioid is present. Read about how to use fentanyltest strips here.
Naloxone or Narcan can reverse an opioid overdose:Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, is administered via nasal spray or injection and can be bought over the counter. Friends, family members and bystanders can give a person naloxone in the case of an overdose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Sometimes multiple doses are needed, depending on the strength of the opioid.
People who use Narcan should still go to the hospital: Naloxone reverses an opioid overdose for 30 to 90 minutes, so it is possible overdose symptoms can return once the treatment wears off.
You can’t overdose by touching an item containing fentanyl. In 2017, the American College of Medical Toxicology and the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology released a joint statement saying “it is very unlikely” that skin exposure to fentanyl powder or tablets “would cause significant opioid toxicity.” Fentanyl isn’t absorbed well by the skin; for fentanyl to have a physical effect on the body, it must enter the bloodstream. Some medical fentanyl is delivered through skin patches, but it is absorbed slowly over the course of hours. These patches can’t quickly deliver a high dose of fentanyl.
Breathing air in a room with fentanyl can’t make you sick. Medical experts said fentanyl isn’t volatile, meaning it doesn’t easily become a vapor, which means you’re not going to become sick from breathing near it. Experts said fentanyl doesn’t just float up into the air and unintentionally expose people nearby.
Fentanyl does not smell like popcorn when it burns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that fentanyl is odorless and tasteless, and there is no visible way of knowing if or how much fentanyl a pill contains. But those low-cost test strips can determine whether a drug contains traces of fentanyl.
Canadian police dismantled what they said Thursday is the largest, most sophisticated illicit drug “super lab” in the country, saying they had seized “a record number of illegal firearms, synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they believe organized crime ran the operation where there was mass-production and distribution of fentanyl and methamphetamine across Canada and internationally.
Officers served search warrants last week on the drug lab in Falkland, British Columbia and associated locations in Surrey, in Metro Vancouver. The RCMP released multiple photos of the operation showing officers in protective suits retrieving items from the “super lab.”
Police said they seized 54 kilograms of fentanyl, “massive” amounts of precursor chemicals, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, and smaller amounts of cocaine, MDMA and cannabis.
Canadian police dismantled what they said is the largest, most sophisticated illicit drug “super lab” in the country.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
They also found a total of 89 firearms, including handguns, AR-15-style rifles and submachine-guns — “many of which were loaded and ready to be used.” They also found small explosive devices, ammunition, silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armor, and $500,000 Canadian (US$359,000) in cash.
Investigators said a suspect, Gaganpreet Randhawa, was arrested and is in custody facing numerous drug and firearms-related charges.
“This is undoubtedly a major blow to the transnational organized crime groups involved, and a great step towards ensuring the safety of Canadians, and the international community,” said Jillian Wellard, Officer in Charge of Federal Policing Pacific Region.
Fentanyl is a main ingredient in much of the toxic illicit drugs that have killed nearly 48,000 people across Canada between January 2016 and March 2024, according to the Canadian government.
The bust comes about two weeks after Canadian police said had made arrests linked to another transnational organized crime group. The RCMP said it had worked with the FBI for over a year to target a Mexican cartel-linked criminal network which had been moving large amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine from Central and South America via the United States to Canada and overseas.
Canadian authorities said that network had also has been commissioning murders across North America, and laundering significant amounts of money. The alleged leader of that network, Canadian Ryan Wedding, remains at large, and is wanted by the United States and Canada, authorities said.
BOSTON — While the scourge of opioid addiction continues to affect Massachusetts, the number of people getting legal prescriptions for heavily addictive medicines is falling, according to the latest federal data.
Massachusetts had the second lowest opioid prescription rate in New England in 2022, following Vermont, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Health care providers in the Bay State wrote 30.8 opioid prescriptions for every 100 residents, the federal agency reported.
That’s a slight drop from the previous year but a substantial decline from the 66 per 100 prescription rate in 2006, when the CDC began tracking the data, which lags by two years.
New Hampshire, which has also seen declining numbers of opioid prescriptions in recent years, had the third-lowest rate in New England in 2022, with 32 prescriptions for every 100 residents. Maine had the highest rate in the region, or 35.2 per 100 residents.
Nationally, the overall prescription rate was 39.5 prescriptions per 100 people in 2022, according to the CDC data.
Curbing opioid addiction has been a major focus on Beacon Hill for a number of years, with hundreds of millions of dollars being devoted to expanding treatment and prevention efforts.
For many, opioid addiction has its roots in prescription painkillers such as Oxycontin and Percocet, which led them to street-bought heroin and fentanyl once those prescriptions ran out.
In 2016, then-Gov. Charlie Baker and lawmakers pushed through a raft of rules to curb over-prescribing of opioids. Those included a cap on new prescriptions written in any seven-day period and a requirement that doctors consult a state prescription monitoring database before prescribing an additive opioid.
Meanwhile opioid manufacturers have been hammered with hundreds of lawsuits from the states and local governments over their role in fueling a wave of opioid addiction. Attorney General Maura Healey’s office recently agreed to a multi-billion dollar settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma.
Supporters of the tougher requirements say they have saved lives by dramatically reducing the number of heavily addictive opioids being prescribed.
Pain management groups say the regulatory backlash has made some doctors worried about writing prescriptions for opioids, depriving patients of treatment.
There were 2,125 confirmed or suspected opioid-related deaths in 2023 — which is 10%, or 232, fewer fatal overdoses than the same period in 2022, according to the latest data from the state Department of Public Health.
Last year’s opioid-related overdose death rate also decreased by 10% to 30.2 per 100,000 people compared with 33.5 in 2022, DPH said.
Health officials attributed the persistently high death rates to the effects of an “increasingly poisoned drug supply,” primarily with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Fentanyl was present in 90% of the overdose deaths where a toxicology report was available, state officials noted.
Nationally, there were 107,543 overdose deaths reported in the U.S. in 2023, a 3% decrease from the estimated 111,029 in 2022, according to CDC data.
On Beacon Hill, state lawmakers are being pressured to take more aggressive steps to expand treatment and prevention options for those struggling with opioid addiction.
Last month, a coalition of more than 100 public health and community-based organizations wrote to House and Senate leaders urging them to pass substance abuse legislation before the Dec. 31 end of the two-year session.
“There isn’t a day that goes by without several people in the Commonwealth dying from an overdose or losing loved ones to this disease,” they wrote. “As individuals and institutions working to combat the opioid epidemic, we know the Commonwealth must do more to prevent addiction, help people find pathways to treatment and recovery, and save lives.”
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.
BOSTON — While the scourge of opioid addiction continues to affect Massachusetts, the number of people getting legal prescriptions for heavily addictive medicines is falling, according to the latest federal data.
Massachusetts had the second lowest opioid prescription rate in New England in 2022, following Vermont, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Health care providers in the Bay State wrote 30.8 opioid prescriptions for every 100 residents, the federal agency reported.
That’s a slight drop from the previous year but a substantial decline from the 66 per 100 prescription rate in 2006, when the CDC began tracking the data, which lags by two years.
New Hampshire, which has also seen declining numbers of opioid prescriptions in recent years, had the third-lowest rate in New England in 2022, with 32 prescriptions for every 100 residents. Maine had the highest rate in the region, or 35.2 per 100 residents.
Nationally, the overall prescription rate was 39.5 prescriptions per 100 people in 2022, according to the CDC data.
Curbing opioid addiction has been a major focus on Beacon Hill for a number of years, with hundreds of millions of dollars being devoted to expanding treatment and prevention efforts.
For many, opioid addiction has its roots in prescription painkillers such as Oxycontin and Percocet, which led them to street-bought heroin and fentanyl once those prescriptions ran out.
In 2016, then-Gov. Charlie Baker and lawmakers pushed through a raft of rules to curb over-prescribing of opioids. Those included a cap on new prescriptions written in any seven-day period and a requirement that doctors consult a state prescription monitoring database before prescribing an additive opioid.
Meanwhile opioid manufacturers have been hammered with hundreds of lawsuits from the states and local governments over their role in fueling a wave of opioid addiction. Attorney General Maura Healey’s office recently agreed to a multi-billion dollar settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma.
Supporters of the tougher requirements say they have saved lives by dramatically reducing the number of heavily addictive opioids being prescribed.
Pain management groups say the regulatory backlash has made some doctors worried about writing prescriptions for opioids, depriving patients of treatment.
There were 2,125 confirmed or suspected opioid-related deaths in 2023 — which is 10%, or 232, fewer fatal overdoses than the same period in 2022, according to the latest data from the state Department of Public Health.
Last year’s opioid-related overdose death rate also decreased by 10% to 30.2 per 100,000 people compared with 33.5 in 2022, DPH said.
Health officials attributed the persistently high death rates to the effects of an “increasingly poisoned drug supply,” primarily with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Fentanyl was present in 90% of the overdose deaths where a toxicology report was available, state officials noted.
Nationally, there were 107,543 overdose deaths reported in the U.S. in 2023, a 3% decrease from the estimated 111,029 in 2022, according to CDC data.
On Beacon Hill, state lawmakers are being pressured to take more aggressive steps to expand treatment and prevention options for those struggling with opioid addiction.
Last month, a coalition of more than 100 public health and community-based organizations wrote to House and Senate leaders urging them to pass substance abuse legislation before the Dec. 31 end of the two-year session.
”There isn’t a day that goes by without several people in the Commonwealth dying from an overdose or losing loved ones to this disease,” they wrote. “As individuals and institutions working to combat the opioid epidemic, we know the Commonwealth must do more to prevent addiction, help people find pathways to treatment and recovery, and save lives.”
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.
A D.C. woman has pleaded guilty in the death of her 3-year-old daughter after the young girl accidentally ingested pills containing fentanyl in 2022.
A D.C. woman has pleaded guilty in the death of her 3-year-old daughter after the young girl accidentally ingested pills containing fentanyl in 2022.
On Tuesday, 28-year-old Sasha McCoy pleaded guilty on the charge of voluntary manslaughter. Her plea calls for an agreed upon 4-to-10-year prison sentence, followed by five years of supervised release.
In October 2022, McCoy found her daughter unresponsive after putting her down for a nap. A small bag containing pills was later found on the bed. Her daughter later died at the hospital “from fentanyl and fluorofentanyl intoxication,” a medical examiner said.
A drug analysis later found one of the pills was half a Xanax, and the others contained fentanyl along with other substances.
Medical examiners concluded that the little girl died from fentanyl and fluorofentanyl intoxication, according to a Justice Department news release.
McCoy was charged with the girl’s death in February 2024, with prosecutors alleging that McCoy allowed her daughter to ingest a lethal dose of fentanyl.
She is due back in court for a sentencing hearing on Jan. 3, 2025.
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If you spend much time in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, you will notice, amid the clamor of buses and trucks and car horns and vendors hawking their goods, a nearly steady symphony of sirens.
They scream day and night in rapid response to an endless run of emergencies, many of them in and around MacArthur Park. But it’s not usually a fire that LAFD Station 11 is responding to. Through August of this year, there have been 599 drug overdose calls, compared with 36 runs for structure fires.
“I’ve had three in one day, same person,” said firefighter/paramedic Madison Viray, who has worked at Station 11 for nine years.
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
That’s just one measure of how bad the epidemic is in the low-income neighborhood where homelessness is rampant, drugs are sold and consumed in the open, 83 people died of overdoses in 2023, and merchants complain of gang threats and thefts by addicts.
In the middle of it all is Station 11, located on 7th Street two blocks from the park, with its trucks rolling out around the clock in every direction. Hanging on a wall inside the station is a proclamation from Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez and her colleagues honoring the crew for being ranked by Firehouse Magazine as the busiest ladder company in the nation in 2022.
This year, Station 11 ranks just behind Station 9 in Skid Row (site of the city’s other major drug zone) for total runs, but it is on course to match last year’s total of 15,262 calls for fire and medical incidents (the majority of which do not involve overdoses).
Photographs of the crew at Los Angeles Fire Station 11 are mounted in the recreation room of the firehouse.
While I was meeting with several members of the crew in Station 11 Wednesday afternoon, Viray and engineer Cody Eitner left abruptly to answer a call from an alley near 6th Street and Burlington Avenue. They returned a short time later to say they were too late to save the victim.
“Someone found him and called, but they’d been gone for too long and there was nothing we could do,” Eitner said.
The word on the street is that the drugs in the neighborhood are dirty. Cocaine might be spiked with fentanyl, and fentanyl might be spiked with the veterinary tranquilizer Xylazine, or “tranq” —all of which elevates the possibility of bad reactions.
It’s not uncommon to see people in the park with multiple festering ulcers on their arms and legs — one of the side-effects of tranq. Nor is it uncommon to see people bent in half, like twisted statues, because of muscle rigidity the firefighters refer to as the “Fentanyl fold.”
“Most of the time they’re thankful for saving their lives,” Cody Eitner said about the people they have revived from drug overdoses.
Battalion Chief Brian Franco, who first worked at Station 11 two decades ago as a firefighter, said, “we’ve seen a lot more fatalities from the overdoses than we did with heroin.”
And yet with fentanyl, the drug naloxone, if administered quickly enough, can reverse the effects of opiates and save lives. Sometimes it’s used by friends of the victim, or by a MacArthur Park overdose response team recently initiated by Councilmember Hernandez and the L.A. County Department of Public Health. Or by crews from Station 11.
“The vast majority of our [overdose] calls now are fentanyl,” said Capt. Adam VanGerpen, who serves as a public information officer but also goes on runs. “If we see that there are very shallow respirations … then we’re gonna open up their eyes and see if their pupils are pinpoint. Now we know it’s probably not … cardiac arrest or … respiratory arrest. Now we’re thinking, OK, this is an overdose.”
It can be easier to treat a fentanyl case than a PCP or meth overdose, VanGerpen said, because the latter two drugs can make a person agitated and combative. If it’s a fentanyl overdose, responders will administer the naloxone as a nasal spray (Narcan), inject it into a muscle, or pump it through an IV, depending on the situation.
“Anytime we’re successful, it’s satisfying,” said Capt. Adam Brandos. “In a station like this, where we run so many calls as we do, and it’s kind of a monotonous routine, those little wins are really good with the morale. But it’s not so satisfying to see the repeat. And we’re not changing the cycle at all. … It keeps repeating itself over and over again.”
Two men slump on a bench in MacArthur Park.
Sometimes, Brandos said, a single response can trigger a cascade: “We may go on one call in the park where that call turns into four, because … of the other guy who’s over by the tree, and the other gal that’s over by the lake, and then the other person that’s over here. So that’s pretty normal.”
What is most striking about it all, Brandos said, is that these scenes play out so frequently they have become normalized.
When you first set eyes on the depths of social collapse and public distress, it’s shocking. But it’s all there again the next day, and the next, and although the shock endures, a bit of numbness takes hold, along with doubts that anyone in power is up to the task of restoring any semblance of order.
Anthony Temple, an emergency incident technician at Station 11, took me on a dark virtual tour of a typical day, beginning at the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro Station, which has doubled in recent years as subterranean hall of horrors:
Capt. Adam VanGerpen watches as a fire truck is deployed from Station 11.
“People have overdosed … on the subway platform while people are getting out of the train,” Temple said. “You’ve got people moving around this person, and we all come down there and do what we’ve got to do and take them to the hospital and leave. And you go back to the station and you get dispatched on another overdose where the person will be down, on the sidewalk, kind of like hanging into the street. …
“It’s just day in, day out, morning, noon, night, sidewalk, platform, staircase, park,” Temple said. “You know, it’s just like everywhere.”
Two members of the crew, Viray and Brandos, said they’ve brought their children to the neighborhood to show them where Dad works, and to show them a world they couldn’t have imagined.
And the reaction?
“Shocked,” Viray said of his 14-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.
Emergency medical technicians and paramedics with Los Angeles Fire Station 11 keep an eye on a man they revived from an overdose.
“I wanted to show them what some decision-making could look like,” said Brandos, whose girls are 9 and 11. “They wanted to know why everybody was leaning over on the sidewalk. … I told them exactly what was going on.”
The crew told me they share a camaraderie that’s specific to the demands of Station 11. If you choose to work there, it’s because you like staying busy, you take pride in the number of runs, and you learn to accept that you didn’t create the crisis and can’t fix it. You can only respond to it, one call at a time.
Just before 6:30 p.m., a call came in. A middle-aged man was down at Alvarado Street and Wilshire Boulevard, across the street from the park, in possible cardiac arrest from an overdose. A truck and an ambulance rolled, lights flashing, sirens blaring. They were on the scene in less than three minutes.
The subject was down in front of Yoshinoya Japanese Kitchen, which is bordered by vendors selling electronics, clothing and toiletries. Some of them were closing down in the fading light of day, and people were still gathered behind the restaurant in an alley that serves as a drug bazaar. It’s a hellscape that has become part of the terrain, like the palm trees that rise over Alvarado Street and the street lamps that have gone dead.
One vendor went about his business as if he’d seen this scene play out so often he didn’t need to look again. Some passersby paused to check out the commotion, perhaps waiting to see if the unconscious man would make it. A boy of 10 or so moved in close enough to watch as three firefighters moved toward the man.
The air was rank with the day’s burned energy and wasted chances, and in the spot where I stood behind the ambulance, trash fanned out six feet into the street from the curb. A bag of chips. A Yoshinoya takeout bag. Coke cans. Empty food containers.
All of this is the normalized reality of a neighborhood that once stood as a gem of the city, and now suffers in wait for someone, anyone, to stand up and say this should not exist, cannot exist, and must end, for the sake of civility and for the benefit of the working people who make up the majority of the residents here, raising children who deserve better.
Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics with Los Angeles Fire Station 11 get ready to take a man, they just revived from a drug overdose, to the hospital at the corner of S. Alvarado and Wilshire Blvd.
Firefighter/paramedic Luke Winfield put on a pair of white latex gloves and prepared a nalaxone IV, tied a blue tourniquet around the man’s upper arm and plunged the life-saving drug into the crease of his elbow.
After several seconds, the man jerked up as if on springs, back from the edge of death. He asked what had happened.
“You overdosed,” one of the firefighters said.
Still wobbly, he fell onto a vending cart and lay on his back, looking up at the reincarnated sky as it faded to pink. He was going to make it. This time. They loaded him into the ambulance for a ride to the hospital.
I asked Winfield how many times, in his two years at Station 11, he had done what he just did.
ATLANTA – Gregory Buckner has been sentenced to federal prison for possessing with the intent to distribute fentanyl and heroin and attempting to sell thousands of fentanyl pills disguised as oxycodone tablets.
“Fentanyl and heroin pose an especially insidious danger to the public because they are so often disguised as counterfeit pills,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “This investigation and prosecution are the product of our collaborative efforts with our law enforcement partners to remove these deadly drugs from our communities and hold accountable individuals, such as Buckner, who attempt to distribute and profit from them.”
“Keeping our communities safe is our highest priority,” said Robert J. Murphy, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Atlanta Division. “The investigation and subsequent conviction of this drug dealer demonstrates the DEA’s commitment to fight drug traffickers who have no regard for the citizens of our community.”
According to U.S. Attorney Buchanan, the charges, and other information presented in court: In April 2023, Buckner attempted to sell 10,000 pills that purported to be oxycodone, but actually contained fentanyl. When investigators confronted Buckner in a vehicle just prior to this drug transaction, he jumped out of his car and fled on foot. DEA special agents then searched a storage unit rented by Buckner and found a kilogram of fentanyl and more than a kilogram of heroin. Buckner was arrested three months later as part of a fugitive operation.
Gregory Buckner, 48, of Decatur, Georgia, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May to six years, 11 months in prison to be followed by four years of supervised release. Buckner was convicted of possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, after he pleaded guilty on May 23, 2024.
This case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration with valuable assistance provided by the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric J. White and John T. DeGenova prosecuted the case.
Before 6-year-old Jordan Walker was stabbed to death, his grandfather had begged for custody, warning Santa Clara County social workers that the two-bedroom apartment where the San Jose boy lived with a cast of nefarious relatives with criminal backgrounds coming and going was dangerous.
But those red flags were either ignored or mishandled, grandfather Morian Walker Sr. said. Now as one of the boy’s uncles sits in jail on murder charges in the killings of Jordan and Jordan’s great-grandmother a year ago, Walker Sr. is suing Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency, Washington Elementary School in San Jose and others, claiming they didn’t do enough to keep Jordan safe.
“I talked to several people at Child Protective Services, to social workers,” Walker said in a phone interview. “I asked them to do criminal background histories on everyone that’s living there. I asked them to check the police reports, to see the police blotter at that location. It all fell on deaf ears.”
The lawsuit hasn’t been served yet, and the county had no comment except to say that “the murder of this child and his great-grandmother is a heartbreaking and shocking tragedy.” The school district also had no comment.
The lawsuit also challenges a guiding principle of Damion Wright, the director of the county’s child welfare agency who is named in the lawsuit: that children always do best with their families. In this case, at least, despite intervention and support from his agency, Jordan was placed with the wrong relatives.
As the lawsuit makes clear, Jordan’s brief life was chaotic and insecure. His mother, Danielle Walker Marshman, had a history of drug problems and allegations of neglect. In August 2022, a social worker came to her home amid reports that adults there were selling fentanyl and leaving drug paraphernalia around the house. When Jordan’s mother refused a drug test and social workers didn’t see any signs of drugs, the case was considered “unfounded” and closed, the lawsuit says.
Two months later, social workers responded to reports that Jordan’s mother and stepfather were smoking fentanyl, and Jordan was left alone for hours and had to “scrounge” for food. The case was closed because “social workers said they were unable to make contact with the family,” the lawsuit said.
Not until February 2023 was Jordan removed from his mother’s care — six months before he was killed — when he took a bag of methamphetamines to school and told his teacher that his mother had given it to him. The lawsuit accuses Washington Elementary of sending Jordan home that day with his mother and, in prior instances, failing to report her neglectful care of him.
Even so, the incident with the bag of methamphetamine triggered prosecutors to charge Jordan’s mother with child endangerment. That’s when county social workers sent Jordan to live with Delphina Turner, his 71-year-old maternal great-grandmother.
“The apartment was described as an endless revolving door of different drug users and homeless people — both short term and long term visitors,” the lawsuit said.
Those coming and going through Turner’s apartment while Jordan was assigned to live there, the lawsuit says, were a convicted rapist, a felon who spent 20 years in prison, at least two drug addicts, and Jordan’s uncle, Nathan Addison, who had drug and mental health issues and a prison recordand is charged with Jordan’s murder.
At one point, it appears that a social worker flagged the family problems, writing in an “investigation narrative” that “the generational history of substance use, mental health, and criminal history indicate a risk for the family environment the child is exposed to.”
Walker, who filed the lawsuit, “was upset and appalled that his grandson was being placed in Turner’s home after social workers were told that he wanted the boy, had a stable environment for Jordan to live in and Jordan loved his grandfather and wanted nothing more,” the lawsuit said. Turner was once Walker’s mother-in-law.
Morian Walker, Sr., shares photos of himself with his late grandson, Jordan Walker, who was stabbed to death in Aug. 2023 allegedly by an uncle with a long criminal history. Walker is suing Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency for placing Jordan in an unsafe home instead of with him. (Photos Courtesy of Morian Walker)
Walker, 59, retired after a military career, says he purchased all of his grandson’s clothes and toys over the years in an effort to help his daughter who was struggling. In the lawsuit, Walker was characterized as “stable and had no drug or criminal history.”
Even though Walker “adamantly expressed” to social workers “the unsafe living conditions and the number of convicted felons and drug addicts living with Mrs. Turner,” Jordan was allowed to remain at the apartment of his great-grandmother. Turner had a long-term job at NASA, but Walker says she enabled her younger, drug-abusing, dependent relatives.
At one point, a social worker told a family member that “social workers knew there were dangerous people going in and out of Ms. Turner’s house, including Nathan Addison” and warned Turner that only she and Jordan were allowed in the home, the lawsuit says.
“Social Services did nothing to ensure the warning was adhered to,” the lawsuit says, “and in fact, knew it was not.”
The great-grandmother also promised that she would supervise all visits between Jordan and his mother, who had not been attending drug classes as agreed, the lawsuit said. When a social worker visited the mother’s home in June 2023 and found Jordan with her unsupervised — and the mother refusing a drug test — she called for the court to terminate parental rights. And that’s how — just weeks before the killing — Jordan was sent to live again with his great-grandmother in the two-bedroom apartment.
By that time, Addison had been released from prison and was back living in the apartment, the lawsuit said.
Walker says he was told by relatives that Turner had been giving money to Addison, and he may have become enraged when she cut him off, which led to the stabbing. Prosecutors wouldn’t immediately comment on a motive.
Walker broke down with emotion as he remembered his grandson’s short life, how he liked to swim and ride his skateboard. He was funny.
“I love him and I miss him,” Walker said. “And with every day that goes by, I won’t stop fighting for justice for Jordan and bringing to light the travesty that Santa Clara County Family and Children’s Services and everybody involved have let Jordan down.”
In a nondescript garage in Connecticut, a New Haven man manufactured hundreds of thousands of counterfeit pills containing methamphetamine, a powerful opioid and other illicit drugs that he shipped around the U.S. and gave to local dealers to sell on the streets, new federal grand jury indictments allege.
Federal law enforcement officials announced the criminal indictments against the man and six other people on Monday, calling the case one of the largest counterfeit pill busts ever in New England.
Kelldon Hinton, 45, is accused of running the operation from a rented garage he called his “lab” in East Haven, about 5 miles from downtown New Haven, using drugs and pill presses he bought from sellers in China and other countries, federal authorities said.
Officials said Hinton shipped more than 1,300 packages through the U.S. mail to people who bought the pills on the dark web from February 2023 to February 2024. He also gave pills to associates in Connecticut who sold them to their customers, the indictments allege.
The six other people who were indicted are also from Connecticut.
Hinton sold counterfeit oxycodone, Xanax and Adderall pills that contained methamphetamine and protonitazene, a synthetic opioid that is three time more powerful than fentanyl, federal officials said. The tablets also contained dimethylpentylone – a designer party drug known to be mislabeled as ecstasy – and xylazine, a tranquilizer often called “tranq.”
Hinton and four others were arrested on Sept. 5, the same day authorities with search warrants raided the East Haven garage and other locations. Officials say they seized several hundred thousand pills, two pill presses and pill manufacturing equipment. One of the pill presses can churn out 100,000 pills an hour, authorities said.
In this photo released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office Connecticut, seized counterfeit pills are displayed Sept. 5, 2024, in East Have, Ct.
U.S. Attorney’s Office Connecticut via AP
A federal public defender for Hinton did not immediately return an email seeking comment Monday.
Federal, state and local authorities were involved in the investigation, including the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and state and local police.
“This investigation reveals the constant challenges that we in law enforcement face in battling the proliferation of synthetic opioids in America,” Connecticut U.S. Attorney Vanessa Roberts Avery said in a statement.
Fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and other powerful opioids are contributing to high numbers of overdoses across the country, said Stephen Belleau, acting special agent in charge of the DEA’s New England field division.
“DEA will aggressively pursue drug trafficking organizations and individuals who distribute this poison in order to profit and destroy people’s lives,” he said in a statement.
Authorities said they were tipped off about Hinton by an unnamed source in June 2023. Law enforcement officials said they later began searching and seizing parcels sent to and from Hinton and set up surveillance that showed him dropping off parcels at a post office. Investigators also said they ordered bogus pills from Hinton’s operation on the dark web.
In addition to Hinton, prosecutors also charged: Heshima Harris, 53 of New Haven; Emanuel Payton, 33, of New Haven; Marvin Ogman, 47, of Est Haven; Shawn Stephens. 34, of West Haven; Arnaldo Echevarria, 42, of Waterbury, and Cheryle Tyson, 64, of West Haven. Hinton, Payton and Ogman are currently detained, while Harris, Stephens, Echevarri, and Tyson are released pending trial.
Hinton has a criminal record dating to 1997 that includes convictions for assault, larceny and drug sales, federal authorities said in a search warrant application.
About 107,500 people died of overdoses in the U.S. last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s down 3% from 2022, when there were an estimated 111,000 such deaths, the agency said.
The country’s overdose epidemic has killed more than 1 million people since 1999.
As “60 Minutes” reported Sunday, nearly all the fentanyl flooding into the U.S. is made in Mexico by two powerful drug cartels, with chemicals primarily purchased from China. And as you’re about to hear, it is frequently hidden in counterfeit pills made to look just like prescription drugs. It’s the scourge of our time. Last year more than 70,000 Americans died from fentanyl; that’s a higher death toll than U.S. military casualties in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
First, a report on fentanyl killing over 70,000 a year in the U.S. Then, FTC Chair Lina
Khan: The 60 Minutes Interview. And, take a look inside the treasures of the National Archives.
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