A man received a 20-year prison sentence in federal court Wednesday after being linked to a string of juvenile overdoses in Carrollton and pleading guilty to drug charges last year, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas said.
Luis Eduardo Navarrete, 22, pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and selling drugs to someone under 21. He is one of 11 people charged in connection with the overdoses, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release. An attorney listed for Navarrete did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As children overdosed and died, Navarrete continued distributing “poisonous pills” to juvenile dealers to sell in schools, U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton said in a written statement.
“Brushing off the pain of his young victims’ family and friends, he delivered fentanyl into the hands of children, extinguishing lives before they’d even really begun,” Simonton said. “The callousness he displayed is truly chilling. Although we can never bring these kids back, we hope today’s verdict is a balm to their families’ unbearable suffering.”
At Navarrete’s sentencing hearing, an officer testified that Navarrete started trafficking fentanyl in August 2022.
Following a domestic altercation, Navarrete was put on an ankle monitor and relied on two co-defendants — Rafael Soliz Jr. and Robert Gaitan — to pick up counterfeit pills from his sources and deliver them to his home in Carrollton, prosecutors said.
He continued supplying pills to minors after he was told they were causing overdoses, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. On Jan. 26, 2023, a juvenile dealer told Navarrete that one of his counterfeit pills caused a 14-year-old middle school student to “pass away,” prosecutors said, and the dealer included a photograph of first responders at the teen’s home.
Despite being told of the death, Navarrete continued distributing the drugs, and less than a week later, another dealer told him that a 17-year-old in high school had taken one of the pills and “couldn’t wake up.” The pills were counterfeit, the news release from the attorney’s office said.
“Od bro… wtf happening,” the dealer wrote. “Don’t tell me it was u that sold em like 18 30s … that’s another youngin dead bro.”
Navarrete continued trafficking drugs until his arrest two days later, according to authorities.
The fentanyl Navarrete sold originated from the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, according to testimony from the officer, prosecutors said.
Over the course of the investigation, authorities made about 40 arrests of adults and juveniles, seizing more than 1.2 million fentanyl pills. The conspiracy resulted in at least 14 juveniles overdosing, with four of them dying.
Navarrete’s main supplier — Jason Xavier Villanueva — received a 15-year federal prison sentence in January. Navarrete’s drug runners, Soliz and Gaitan, also received sentences.
At Navarrete’s sentencing hearing, the mother of one of the victims who died testified, according to prosecutors.
“He was the soul of our home,” she said in Spanish. “I would like for everyone who’s present to know that these people who sell fentanyl, they destroy families. … On behalf of all those children who have passed away due to fentanyl, this has to stop.”
