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A Pittsburg man has been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for selling pills laced with fentanyl that killed a Walnut Creek woman in 2020.
Gage Pascoe, 23, was sentenced in federal court to 68 months in prison after pleading guilty in February to fentanyl distribution.
The U.S. District Court judge who sentenced Pascoe also ordered him to serve five years of supervision after he is released from prison and to pay for funeral costs for the victim’s family.
Pascoe met with the victim, a Walnut Creek woman with whom he’d attended high school, on the night of June 16, 2020, to sell her oxycodone M30 pills, according to his guilty plea.
The woman was found dead in her bed the following morning while the bag of pills was found in her bedroom. Lab tests later determined the pills were laced with fentanyl, which caused her to overdose.
A sentencing memorandum from federal prosecutors argued that Pascoe did not intend to cause the woman to overdose, but that he acted recklessly by selling the pills and “played Russian roulette” with her life.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California oversaw the case. The case was investigated by federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Walnut Creek Police Department.
