Jeremiah David Carlton, 21, of Canyon Lake is accused in the death of the teenager, identified in court documents only as “J.G.”

Carlton is charged with second-degree murder, transportation of controlled substances for sale and possession of controlled substances for sale.

During a pretrial hearing Tuesday at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta, Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Monterosso conferred with the prosecution and defense regarding a specific date for the next stage of proceedings, and both sides indicated they would be prepared to move forward at the end of next month.

Carlton is being held in lieu of $1 million bail at the Byrd Detention Center.

His co-defendant, 21-year-old Raymond Gene Tyrrell of French Valley, who was charged separately, pleaded guilty in July to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in state prison. However, due to the amount of time he’d already spent in jail awaiting disposition of the case, along with other sentencing credits, Judge Stephen Gallon converted his prison term to what’s known as a “paper commitment,” enabling Tyrrell to instantly go on parole.

Sgt. Rick Espinoza of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department alleged that Carlton and Tyrrell provided the drugs that led to the death of J.G. on the night of Feb. 24, 2021, at a residence in the 35000 block of Sugar Maple Street, near Leon Road.

Espinoza said deputies were called to the location to investigate two possible fentanyl poisonings and discovered the girl and a man, whose identity was not released, comatose. Both were taken to a regional trauma center, where the man was revived but the girl succumbed to the toxic ingestion.

“Detectives conducted an investigation and developed information that this was possibly a homicide,” the sergeant said, declining to elaborate on the circumstances.

Tyrrell was summoned to the sheriff’s Southwest station in Murrieta a day later and interviewed by detectives, after which he was taken into custody. Carlton was served with an arrest warrant and taken into custody at his residence.

Neither defendant had documented prior felony convictions.

Since February 2021, the District Attorney’s Office has charged over 30 people countywide in connection with fentanyl poisonings.

In November, prosecutors closed the books on the county’s first fentanyl murder case to go before a jury, culminating in the conviction of 34- year-old Vicente David Romero, who was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for the 2020 death of a Temecula woman. District Attorney Mike Hestrin said it was the first fentanyl murder conviction in the state.

According to public health statistics, there were 550 known fentanyl- related fatalities countywide in 2023, a 9% increase from 2022, when there were 503.

Fentanyl is manufactured in overseas labs, principally in China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says the synthetic opioid is smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border by cartels.

Fentanyl is 80-100 times more potent than morphine and can be mixed into any number of street narcotics and prescription drugs, without a user knowing what he or she is consuming. Ingestion of only two milligrams can be fatal.

Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans between 18 and 45 years old.

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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — A 23-year-old man accused of giving a fatal dose of fentanyl to his then-17-year-old girlfriend in an unincorporated area of Riverside County near Desert Hot Springs two years ago was arrested near the Mexico border, authorities announced Tuesday.

Michael Garcia was arrested around 7:45 p.m. Monday in the El Centro area and returned to Indio, where he was booked into the John Benoit Dentention Center on suspicion on unlawfully furnishing a controlled substance to a minor and felony child endangerment, according to inmate records and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

He was being held in liue of $75,000 bail and tentatively scheduled to appear in court for arraignment Thursday in Indio.

Around 9 a.m. Aug. 21, 2022, deputies from the Palm Desert Sheriff’s Station responded to a report of an unresponsive teen girl in her bedroom in the 15000 block of Via Quedo, according to Sgt. Sean Liebrand of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

“Lifesaving measures were unsuccessful, and the juvenile was ultimately pronounced deceased,” Liebrand said in a statement. “The investigation determined the female juvenile had overdosed on fentanyl.”

The department’s Overdose Investigations and Narcotics Unit assumed the investigation and identified Garcia as the suspect who gave her the fentanyl, according to Liebrand.

According to a court declaration in support of his arrest, Garcia was present when deputies responded to the home, and he told investigator James Peters that the previous night he “purchased M-30 pills, which he stated he knew contained fentanyl, and provided them to (the girl), who smoked them.”

“Michael said he awoke the next morning to find (her) overdosing,” Peters wrote in the declaration.

According to Peters, Garcia also told him that he knew the girl was only 17 years old but he had a sexual relationship with her for several months and was buying her fentanyl even though he knew she had been released from a residential rehab for fentanyl addiction a few weeks before her fatal overdose.

More suspects and arrests were expected in the case, Liebrand said at the time. It was not immediately clear if additional arrests have been made in connection to the case.

Anyone with additional information on the case was asked to call Peters at 951-955-1700 or Investigator Dan Shaffer at 951-955-1700.

The post 2 Years After Teen Girl’s Death In Riverside County, Arrest Made appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.