SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Placer County District Attorney's Office has filed its first-ever fentanyl-related murder charge.
It's something other prosecutors are starting to do across Northern California. And people like Cindy Watanabe are grateful for the change.
In a succulent-lined backyard, Cindy sees reminders of her son, in nearly everything.
"I think of him everyday," Cindy said. "If I’m sad or if I’m in pain, I come out here and I lose myself in it.”
About five years ago, inside of her home, she found her 20-year-old son Tommy dead in his bed. She later learned he died of fentanyl poisoning.
"We had to deal with the shock and the change and the complete life change, and how to get on without him, I didn’t want to, I wanted to join him," Cindy said.
After finding a small bag filled with white powder, searching his phone and talking to his friends, she found out he bought fentanyl through the "dark web." Cindy said as a former baseball star, her son was looking for pain relief to heal old injuries.
"But he didn’t know that it would kill him," Cindy said.
Prosecutors never followed up to hold anyone accountable for his death.
Years later, counties in Northern California have seen an increase in fentanyl-related deaths. This trend is helping create change.
"It is the first time in our county that we have found a murder charge related to the selling of fentanyl that led to someone's death," Morgan Gire, the Pacer County District Attorney said.
On Tuesday, "charges of murder and possession of a controlled substance for sale, as it related to a local fentanyl related death," were filed against 20-year-old Carson David Schewe in Placer County. They believe drugs given by Schewe killed a man.
"What we are prosecuting is someone's knowledge that what they are doing is extremely dangerous and likely to lead to someone's death. And with that knowledge, someone chooses to engage in that behavior anyway, that is murder," Gire said.
This comes just two months after the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office filed its first-ever fentanyl-related murder charge too, arresting 36-year-old Anthony Taft Lee for the death of a 21-year-old man.
"They have a drug that they know could kill somebody and by selling it, there's a reckless disregard for human life by doing so, which leads you into being able to charge an implied malice murder," Jeff Laugero, the Stanislaus County Assistant District Attorney, said.
And although Tommy’s killer was never found, his mom is relieved others are finally paying the price.
"I truly believe anyone distributing fentanyl with the knowledge that it is fentanyl is a murderer, they’re actively killing people for money," Cindy said.
Prosecutors tell me these arrests are only the beginning and they still have lots of work to do moving forward.
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