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Man arrested after teenager dies from fentanyl overdose

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A man accused of giving his 17-year-old girlfriend a fatal dose of fentanyl two years ago near Desert Hot Springs was arrested this week near the Mexican border, authorities announced Tuesday.

Michael Garcia, 23, was arrested in the El Centro neighborhood around 7:45 p.m. Monday and transported back to Indio, where he was arrested on suspicion of illegally distributing a controlled substance to a minor and endangering a child, according to inmate records and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

He was held on $75,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court in Indio on Thursday for arraignment.

At approximately 9 a.m. on August 21, 2022, officers responded to a report of an unresponsive juvenile girl in her bedroom in the 15000 block of Via Quedo, according to Sergeant Sean Liebrand of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. This is an unincorporated area just outside the city limits of Desert Hot Springs.

She could not be resuscitated and investigators concluded she had overdosed on fentanyl that Garcia had given her, Liebrand said.

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, then 21, also told him that although he knew the girl was only 17, he had a sexual relationship with her for several months and bought her fentanyl, even though he knew she had been released from inpatient rehab for fentanyl addiction just weeks before her fatal overdose.

In May 2023, sheriff's officials first announced that they were searching for Garcia but could not find him.

Liebrand said at the time that more suspects and arrests were expected in the case. It was initially unclear whether there were any further arrests.

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