LOS ANGELES — A Granada Hills man who is alleged to have knowingly sold fentanyl and methamphetamine to a woman who was found dead from an overdose hours later has been charged with murder, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced Tuesday.
Casey Linder, 38, has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and four counts each of selling a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, according to the DA’s office.
The case stems from the alleged sale last July 31 of the illegal drugs to Mo Ida Solomon, whom police found dead in her downtown Los Angeles apartment hours later, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
The 35-year-old woman died from the effects of methamphetamine, fentanyl and alprazolam, according to the County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s website.
Linder was arrested last Thursday by Los Angeles police and has remained behind bars since then in lieu of $2.1 million bail, jail records show.
He is due back in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom July 3, when a date is scheduled to be set for a hearing to determine if there is sufficient evidence to allow the case to proceed to trial.
In a statement announcing the charges, Gascón said it was a “deeply tragic case illustrating the heartbreaking consequences of opioid sales in our communities.”
The case marks the second in the county involving the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office within recent months involving fentanyl deaths.
In April, a San Bernardino County woman was charged with two counts of murder for allegedly furnishing fentanyl to two young Covina men who died within less than a week of each other.
Isyss Ibisola Akerele, 21, of Colton, was charged with two counts of murder in connection with the March 31 death of 20-year-old Andrew Nunez and the April 4 death of 18-year-old Rickey Renta III, along with three drug- related counts. There is also an allegation that she was free on bail or her own recognizance at the time of the alleged crimes in connection with an earlier arrest in San Bernardino County, according to Deputy District Attorney Phil Stirling.
Nunez died of fentanyl toxicity, while Renta died from fentanyl and bromazolam toxicity, according to records from the medical examiner’s office.
Akerele remains jailed without bail while awaiting arraignment July 31 in a Pomona courtroom.
Fentanyl is manufactured in overseas labs, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says the synthetic opioid is smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border by cartels.
The drug is 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and ingestion of only two milligrams can be fatal.
Last August, a jury convicted a Temecula man of second-degree murder for the fentanyl-related death of a 26-year-old woman in June 2020 in what the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office called a landmark case in California. He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has also prosecuted a number of cases involving fentanyl deaths, including one against a Torrance resident who was sentenced in February to 26 years in federal prison after he admitted supplying fentanyl that caused two deaths on consecutive days in 2020 in Redondo Beach hotel rooms.
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