The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday announced a murder charge has been filed against an 22-year-old San Jose man who allegedly sold powerful opioids to a woman who died of an overdose last week.
Prosecutors said Anthony Minjares allegedly sold pills containing the synthetic opioid fentanyl to an 18-year-old Santa Clara woman over Snapchat. The woman and her 17-year-old boyfriend both overdosed on the pills last week. First responders were able to resuscitate the boyfriend, but the woman was pronounced dead.
Prosecutors charged Minjares with murder on the basis that he allegedly knew that the pills were extremely dangerous when he sold them. Minjares faces a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted, according to the district attorney’s office.
District Attorney Jeff Rosen said:
“The destructive and devastating power of illegal opioids has ravaged many parts of this country.”
Rosen added:
“The recklessness of those who peddle these extremely dangerous and illegal counterfeit drugs is tantamount, legally and ethically, to murder.”
The two teenagers believed the pills to be the oxycodone, according to the district attorney’s office. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl is roughly 50 to 100 times more potent than powerful opioids like morphine.
After buying the pills and other drugs from Minjares on April 5, the woman’s boyfriend was found unresponsive that evening and was only saved by first responders’ use of the medication naloxone. The woman was found unresponsive in her bedroom later that night.
Minjares was arraigned Tuesday at the San Jose Hall of Justice on the murder charge as well as narcotics-related felonies, according to the district attorney’s office.
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