Jason Xavier Villanueva, 23, Roberta Alexander Gaitan, 20, and Rafael Soliz, Jr., 23, were arrested in early 2023 amid several other arrests related to dealing illicit pills cut with fentanyl that were marketed to juveniles as other forms of opioid prescription pills such as Percocet and OxyContin.
Upon his February 2023 arrest, Villanueva, who received a sentence of 15 years in federal prison, was described by Simonton as the “main source of supply in the Carrollton juvenile overdose cases” in a press conference at the Earle Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas. Investigators said Villanueva “worked through a juvenile dealer” to supply pills to a pair of dealers who had rented a house near R.L. Turner High School in Carrollton. Victims ranged in age between 13 and 17.
“In court documents, Mr. Villanueva admitted he distributed more than 200,000 fentanyl pills to North Texas customers over the course of five or six months..." – U.S. Attorney for Northern District of Texas
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Gaitan and Soliz, who received sentences of 5 and 15 years, respectively, were two of the young dealers to whom Villanueva supplied drugs. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney, the two were indiscriminate about whom they sold the drugs to, and the entire operation moved in a brazen manner, seemingly without fear of being caught.
“In court documents, Mr. Villanueva admitted he distributed more than 200,000 fentanyl pills to north Texas customers over the course of five or six months, at a rate of about 40,000 pills per month,” the statement read. “He sold the pills – round blue tablets marked M-30 – to a network of juvenile and adult dealers, including Mr. Gaitan and Mr. Soliz, who went on to sell to friends, classmates, and other customers in Carrollton. He often advertised on Instagram and following the arrest of one of his codefendants in February 2023 posted, ‘Only thing that’s gonna stop us is feds.’”
Since February 2023, the Carrollton police department and the Carrollton-Farmers Branch School District have stepped up their efforts to create awareness of the lethal dangers of fentanyl. Even with the public on higher alert than in the past, the school district continued to experience a number of incidents likely related to fentanyl in 2023, with multiple students needing emergency medical attention while on campus, including one at a middle school, in order to be revived.
Ten people have been arrested in connection with three deaths and several overdoses of juveniles in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD from September 2022 to January 2023. The three latest results bring the total number of sentences in the overall case to five, following the 2022 sentences of Donovan Jude Andrews (9 years) and Stephen Paul Brinson (8 years).
The charges related to the Carrollton fentanyl overdoses and deaths were all filed in early 2023. But the charges could have looked much different had they been filed at the end of last year. On Sept. 1, 2023, a new law in Texas went into effect that allows authorities to charge fentanyl dealers who supply pills linked to a death with murder.
