More details are coming out about the persons allegedly responsible for at least a dozen juvenile overdoses on the deadly drug fentanyl in Carrollton and Flower Mound since September 2022.
Two more suspects have been charged in the drug conspiracy that has claimed the lives of three teenagers, according to a Northern District of Texas United States Attorney’s Office news release. The ages of the victims ranged from 13 to 17.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton announced the charges on Friday.
Roberta Alexander Gaitan, 20, and Rafael Soliz, Jr., 22, were both listed and charged in a superseding indictment filed in March.
The pair are being charged with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, according to the release. Law enforcement also charged Gaitan with the distribution of a controlled substance to a person under 21 years of age.
The charges were unsealed on Tuesday, May 9.
The two defendants were brought before a judge Friday and were both ordered to be detained pending trial.
Soliz and Gaitan were allegedly involved in a drug trafficking conspiracy with Jason Xavier Villanueva, Donovan Jude Andrews, Stephan Paul Brinson, Magaly Mejia Cano, and Luis Eduardo Navarrete. The group is accused of counterfeiting opioid pills laced with fentanyl and selling them to young teens. The drugs were allegedly distributed by using juvenile dealers.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Brinson, 18, of Flower Mound, is listed as the alleged source of the deadly drug fentanyl flowing through Carrollton.
Advertisements for the deadly drugs were often found on social media. If convicted, the defendants each face up to 20 years in federal prison.
The investigation was conducted by the DEA’s Dallas Field Office and Carrollton Police Department with help from School Resource Officers from the Carrollton – Farmer’s Branch Independent School District and the Lewisville Independent School District.
In the City of Dallas, crime continues to climb as drug cases in the City have increased to a little over 3,100 since the start of the year, according to the Dallas crime analytics overview dashboard, nearly a 7% increase over the same time period last year.
The dashboard has not been updated since May 2 due to the ransomware attack the City of Dallas suffered on May 3.