There's a ripple of shock throughout the community as details emerge about the overdose of nine Carrollton-Farmers Branch students.
In an eleven-page affidavit, investigators lay out in detail the case against Carrollton couple 21-year-old Luis Navarrete and 29-year-old Magaly Mejia Cano, connected to the overdose of nine teens, three of them fatal.
The document describes how detectives conducted multiple days of surveillance at a house on Highland Drive. They observed the couple conduct hand-to-hand transactions with multiple individuals who sometimes arrived on foot.
As the details come to light, the word is spreading among a community of people who are all too familiar with this heartache. Ofie Moreno and Frank Moreno lost their son Sebastian to fentanyl just a year ago. They said he took half a pill given to him by someone at work for back pain and died at home.
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“He was an amazing person; he just had a heart like no other,” said Ofie Moreno. “We weren't aware that fentanyl existed. It came up and crept up to our home and just destroyed it.”
Today, their son's face is on a billboard in North Richland Hills - a partnership with Lamar Advertising and advocacy organization Rachel's Angels.
Moreno's son was 24. She said the fact that the teens out of Carrollton were between ages 13-17 is unthinkable.
“It just breaks our heart to see all these young people. They're getting younger and younger,” she said.
In the affidavit, a 14-year-old victim who attends RL Turner High School overdosed at her home on December 24th. Less than a month later, detectives said she overdosed again at her home and identified the residence where the drugs came from; the same home that detectives had been watching.
Moreno said she will continue raising awareness about the dangers of fentanyl, and that she now has a mission of three new names and faces to add to billboards along with her son’s
“It hurts me more to speak to them,” she said. “They have no idea what hit their homes.”
The Dallas area Drug Enforcement Administration tells NBC 5 the case is still open as detectives follow leads. Luis Eduardo Navarrete and Magaly Cano face charges of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute a controlled substance.
