Alexandra Capelouto, 20, didn’t die of an overdose, her father said. Neither did Alexander Neville, 14. Or Sam Doxakis, 22.
Capelouto thought she was taking oxycodone. So did Neville. Doxakis thought he was snorting heroin. But they were actually taking cheap — but convincing — knock-offs packed with deadly fentanyl.
These were poisonings, their parents say, not overdoses, and California law needs to treat them as such. Parents are pushing local legislators and law enforcement to handle these crimes more seriously — and local officials are listening.
Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin is prosecuting seven second-degree murder cases against alleged pill pushers on the theory of implied malice. Just as drunken drivers know that getting behind the wheel of a car while inebriated can be deadly, drug dealers know that the fentanyl-spiked drugs they peddle can kill, the theory maintains.
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson filed the department’s first murder case against an alleged dealer who sold the fentanyl that killed a 17-year-old in July.
And Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer will soon add an admonishment to plea deals in which dealers admit that dangerous fentanyl is in street drugs and can be deadly. If that dealer is involved in another fentanyl sale that results in death, second-degree murder charges can be filed. The penalty can be 17 years to life in prison.
“It is a ruse, people are buying Oxycontin and it turns out to be fentanyl. … We are living in a serious epidemic from the misuse of fentanyl,” Spitzer said. “It’s like they’re handing you a loaded gun and you don’t know it’s loaded. … People are dying.”
Spitzer plans to launch his new admonishment policy on Tuesday, Nov. 9.
In Los Angeles County, District Attorney George Gascon has not disclosed any plans to pursue murder charges against fentanyl dealers. Since he took office last December, the reform-minded progressive has been issuing directives eliminating sentence enhancements for offenders rather than beefing them up.
Human toll
Matt CapeIouto’s daughter, Alexandra, was back home in Temecula on winter break at Arizona State University in 2019 when she sought something to ease depression. CapeIouto and his wife found her dead in her bedroom two days before Christmas.
“We got into her phone,” Capelouto said. “We saw the Snapchat correspondence. He sold her a fake pill. She took half of this pill, and that killed her. It was ruled an accidental, noncriminal overdose — but that’s outdated. That’s not correct. My daughter was poisoned.”
Capelouto is one of a tragically growing cadre of parents who’ve lost children the same way, and are demanding action. Most of their kids weren’t addicts struggling with long-term addiction, but curious young people doing what their parents might have done 25 or 30 years ago and lived to joke about.
That was before deadly fentanyl infected just about every street drug.
Fountain Valley’s Sam Doxakis was 16 when he broke his arm in a snowboarding accident. The doctor prescribed morphine, and then eventually Sam began taking Xanax. Somewhere in his brain, the addiction button clicked.
And just like that, he was hooked.
Paula Verrengia, his mother, said he tried rehab three times and would be sober for months at a time. But at age 22, the young man with a square jaw went to play pool with an old acquaintance in March 2018. That person sold him $20 worth of fentanyl-laced heroin.
Sam snorted the drugs in his bedroom, unaware of the fentanyl, and died the next morning of a heart attack. Paramedics with four doses of Narcan couldn’t revive him.
“He didn’t ask for fentanyl, but everybody is calling it an overdose,” said Verrengia, 68, of Fountain Valley. “You can’t go around killing people and not be accountable.”
Verrengia is suing the man she believes sold the drug to her son. Court records show he has been charged 20 times, once for a felony possession with intent to sell, the rest for small- time possession of paraphernalia and possession of drugs.
She said she hasn’t approached Gascon’s office about stiffer penalties for fentanyl dealers because she knows he favors less time in prison for criminal defendants rather than more.
Taking action
Alexander Neville, 14, was a smart, curious kid in Aliso Viejo, prone to a philosophical and distinctively teenage anxiety. He bought what he thought was an Oxycontin pill in June 2020. His parents found him dead in his bedroom the next day.
“This admonishment is a start, however much more needs to be done,” said his mother, Amy Neville. “Especially in the realm of public awareness and education. Fentanyl will still be here, drug dealers will still be selling. When one is arrested, there’s always another one to take their place. But in the end, with the admonishment, at least that dealer is on the hook for future drug dealing.”
The Nevilles formed the Alexander Neville Foundation, aiming to speak directly to middle and high school kids about unseen dangers and forever consequences. Michael Gray of New York has the Actus Foundation, aiming to change national policy and improve data collection. Capelouto and parents from all over the country work with DrugInducedHomicide.org trying to revamp criminal penalties.
Parents also have produced “Dead on Arrival,” a gut-wrenching, 20-minute documentary/public safety announcement aiming to warn young people — and their parents — that no street drug should be considered safe.
Drug-related deaths are expected to hit an all-time high of 100,000 this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The federal government has been prosecuting suspected fentanyl dealers for murder for years, as federal law makes that easier to do than does state law. Parents have been pushing for something similar at the state level.
Right now, California’s criminal code treats fentanyl less seriously than heroin and cocaine. State Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, and Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, pushed bills that would have bumped fentanyl up from its spot as a less-threatening, Schedule II drug, to what they say is its rightful place as a dangerous Schedule I drug.
Those bills didn’t get traction. Neither did Senate Bill 350, by Sen. Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, which would have required warnings to first-time offenders convicted of selling or distributing controlled substances, that such actions could result in another person’s death and that they could be charged with murder. It was dubbed “Alexandra’s Law,” after Capelouto’s daughter. That didn’t get traction either.
“I was so disappointed when our bill didn’t pass,” Capelouto said. “We’re looking, potentially, at a ballot initiative. There’s overwhelming support for it. All you’re doing is warning the dealer to stop doing this, and that if someone dies, it could be charged as murder. It’s the exact same thing we do with drunk driving now.
“I know if this were to become law, it would save lives.”
Source: Orange County Register
Be First to Comment