Man accused of giving girl fatal dose of fentanyl faces trial
A 23-year-old man accused of giving his then 17-year-old girlfriend a fatal dose of fentanyl two years ago in an unincorporated area of Riverside County near Desert Hot Springs is scheduled to make his first court appearance Thursday.
According to inmate records, Michael Garcia is expected to face child endangerment and drug charges at his arraignment Thursday at the Larson Justice Center in Indio.
Garcia was arrested in the El Centro neighborhood around 7:45 p.m. Monday and transported back to Indio, where he was booked into the John Benoit Detention Center. He is charged with illegally providing drugs to a minor and felony child endangerment, according to inmate records and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
He was held on $75,000 bail.
On August 21, 2022, at approximately 9:00 a.m., officers from the Palm Desert Sheriff’s Station responded to a report of a young girl unresponsive in her bedroom in the 15,000 block of Via Quedo, according to Sergeant Sean Liebrand of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
“Life-saving efforts were unsuccessful and the juvenile was ultimately pronounced dead,” Liebrand said in a statement. “The investigation revealed that the minor female had overdosed on fentanyl.”
According to Liebrand, the department’s Overdose Investigation and Narcotics Unit took over the investigation and identified Garcia as the suspect who gave her the fentanyl.
According to a court statement supporting his arrest, Garcia was present when officers came to the house and he told investigator James Peters that the night before, he “purchased M-30 pills that he said he knew contained fentanyl and gave them to (the girl), who then smoked them.”
“Michael said he woke up the next morning and discovered she had overdosed,” Peters wrote in the statement.
According to Peters, Garcia also told him that he knew the girl was only 17 years old, but that he had been having a sexual relationship with her for several months and buying her fentanyl, even though he knew she had been released from inpatient rehab for fentanyl addiction just weeks before her fatal overdose.
Liebrand said at the time that more suspects and arrests were expected in the case. It was initially unclear whether there had been any further arrests in this connection.
Anyone with additional information about the case is asked to call Peters at 951-955-1700 or Investigator Dan Shaffer at 951-955-1700.
