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Lubbock man who is charged with murder

Lubbock man who is charged with murder

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  • Donnie Ford Jr. is the first person who is charged with murder in Lubbock County because of a new law in Texas that deals with the fentanyl crisis.
  • He is accused of making fentanyl pills available that caused the death of 38-year-old Denise Vargas to overdose in September.
  • The indictment results from an investigation by the Lubbock police and a subsequent undercover surgery.
  • The Texas House Bill 6 adopted in 2023 allows murder systems against those who provide fentanyl, which leads to death.

A 38-year-old man who was accused of making the fentanyl pills available that caused the death of a 38-year-old woman to an overdose death in September is charged with the first person in Lubbock County because of murder according to a law that Texan legislator was passed in 2023 in order to approach the Fentanyl crisis in the federal state.

Donnie Ford Jr., who has been recorded in the Lubbock County Detention Center since his arrest on October 10, 2024, is charged by Denise Vargas on September 17 for murder.

The murder has a punishment of five years to live in prison.

Its bond is $ 150,000.

A Grand Jury in Lubbock County initially returned an indictment in December, in which he had accused a crime of the third degree of property, with the intention, less than a gram of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that was 100 times more than morphine and 50 times more than heroin than heroin.

The drug is so strong that its doses in micrograms – 1 millionth of a gram – are measured in hospital environments.

Investigation of an overdose death in West Lubbock

Ford's indictment results from a police that began on September 17, after the Lubbock police were responding to a report at 7:25 a.m. in a house in the 5800 block of the 15th Street.

An answering civil servant spoke on site with a Medical Center Medical at the university who told him that according to a police report, Vargas was found dead in the bathroom of the house.

The officer spoke to Vargas' mother, who said she spoke to her daughter, who had been sick the night before. She said she came to her daughter's house the next morning to see her because she did not answer her phone calls, the report says.

She said she no longer found her daughter in the bathtub appealing and cold, the report says.

The officials searched Vargas' at home and found several recipe pills.

However, the official also found a small piece of aluminum film with two small blue pills, of which he suspected that it contained fentanyl.

The discovery initiated a call to the members of the Task Force of Drug Enforcement Administration, which searched the home of Vargas and gained their telephone as evidence.

Later on this day, the investigators of the Lubbock Police Narcotics Unit set up an undercover operation, in which a meeting with Ford in his house in the 4700 block of 46th Street was bought a meeting with Ford.

A search of his vehicle showed fire film and blue pills, the report says.

Ford was arrested at the crime scene and booked into the Lubbock County Detung Center to count on purpose. The records of prisons show that it was published until the accusation was submitted.

According to prison records, Ford was arrested almost a month after the death of Vargas due to a revocation of his probation for a conviction for local average crime from 2019.

While he was in custody, the public prosecutor's office of the Lubbock district presented a Grand jury who returned true legislation in December and early this month.

He is represented by Lubbock lawyer Nick Olguin, who did not give back a voicemail that was looking for a comment.

According to the centers, the deaths of fentanyl overdoses in the United States have increased for the control of the disease in 2013.

However, the middle of 2016 flooded as drugs that were bought by US drug dealers in the dark network of Chinese manufacturers.

In recent years, the drug of Mexican cartels that they pushed into the pill shape has been smuggled into the district and colored them as other prescription drugs such as Percocet and Xanax appear, according to DEA.

Read others: The deaths of drug overdoses decrease to pre-pandemic values ​​during the fentanyl crisis

What is Texas HB 6 and how does it affect Fentanyl?

Ford's case is the first murder system submitted in Lubbock County in connection with Fentanyl, according to which the 88th legislature was put together in Texas by Rep. Carl Tepper, R-Lubbock. The bill passed both the house and the Senate with cross -party support. Governor Greg Abbott signed the legislative template and came into force on September 1, 2023.

The legislative template, which exposes the drug dealers of a murder suspicion for the provision of fentanyl, which leads to death, was one of four who adopted the legislators of the state legislators to combat the fentanyl crisis.

In 2022, more than 2,000 people in Texas died of overdose drugs with fentanyl, as announced from a press release from Abbott's office in June 2023.

Read others: Texas starts the Narcan Locator Map for the state to combat the fentanyl crisis, overdose deaths

The chief of police at Lubbock, Seth Herman, told the AJ that he appreciates the legislator in Texas, who passed the law in 2023, because it adds another instrument to the tool belt of law enforcement.

“Exactly the direction we have to go,” said Herman. “Because until we start not reducing people for the death of our citizens and the kicking of narcotics – this poison – these ongoing problems.”

While this is the first time that the law was used in Lubbock, other cities in Texas such as El Paso and Abilene have also pursued cases according to this relatively new law.

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