Local DEA Agent on Historical Fentanyl Sentence

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I wanted to chat for a minute here with Steve Bell.

(00:02):
You may have heard Steve a bit in the news
and in conjunction with the story of this sentencing yesterday,
a twenty nine year old man who was convicted. Case
goes back a couple of years, but the conviction happened
in October, and he was sentenced in federal court and
Oma yesterday to life in prison. And this doesn't happen,

(00:25):
This has never happened before in conjunction with a fentanyl death,
and maybe only a couple or three times in the
whole country. And Steve is a special Agent in charge
of the Omaha Drug Enforcement Administration Office and joins us
here on kfab's Morning News. Steve, good morning, Thank good morning, Jerry,
Thank you you bet. Great to have you on. This

(00:45):
was quite the project, wasn't it. Several law enforcement agencies involved.
Can you take us back a little bit, give us
a picture of how the investigation went.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, absolutely so. Back in twenty twenty two, early twenty two,
like March, Douglas County and emergency management responded to a
death of a four year old child and this child
was found to have ingested a small amount of fentanyl
that that led to this child's death. Then Douglas County

(01:21):
Sheriff's Office began an investigation and contacted the DEA Our
Overdose Response Group started doing a deep dive in this
investigation and cultivating enough evidence where we were able to
identify Michael Reese as the person responsible for distributing the

(01:41):
fentanyl that led that ultimately led to this toddler dying
as he said he was. He was convicted, and he
was just sentenced here yesterday to a life in prison
sentence in federal court.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, and there's no good time in a federal sentence,
is there?

Speaker 2 (02:00):
No, there isn't.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, So I think this needs to happen all the time. Uh, Steve,
does that? Do you believe that that message if, if,
if every case like this results in a life sentence,
that that will cut into the number of ventanyl deaths.
These people have got the message.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I think it definitely sends a strong message out there
to those that choose to put this poison on our
street that there is a significant, significant consequence should they
get discovered and ultimately arrested and convicted for putting fentanyl
that religion relates to a death. So yes, the word

(02:43):
is out and I am I am hopeful that people
will heed this sentencing as a reminder that they shouldn't
be doing this. Uh, and there's serious repercussions for those
that do so.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
He was he was wanting to sell this pill to
the kid's mother, right, And was this supposed to be
because we always hear these cases of fentanyl laced drugs,
but this was supposed to be a fentanyl pill, right.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
So according throughout the investigation it was. It was I
think the mother believed it was a percocet pill when
in fact it was a fake, counterfeit blue oxy thirty pill.
Very typical as to what we see that head Sentel
in it and the four year old, you know, typically

(03:37):
what toddler is unbelievable, tragic constant suffered an unbelievable tragic
consequence as a result.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
What about the mother, was she charged with anything?

Speaker 2 (03:48):
She was? She was charged and the courts ended up
giving her, I think a probation sentence of five years
because her you know, we had difficulty proving that she
had knowledge that Sentel was actually in that pill. However,

(04:09):
mister Reese, we were able to prove that he knew
without beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew he was distributing.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, even a percoset for a four year old might
have been fatal. But it's it's so sad.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
It's an unbelievable tragic case, and unfortunately it happens more
often than not throughout the country. Truly truly tragic.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, Steve Bell, Special Agent in charge of the Omaha
DEA Office, Steve, can you give us an idea of
the work you're doing here in Omaha as a primarily
drug interdiction cases like this one.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
So we we do drug interdiction for sure, but we
have a lot of different types of investigations going on
that are that are not only in Omaha but have
tentacles that stretch to other countries. And so we have
certain groups that they work the high level complex conspiracy

(05:06):
cases that have an Omaha impact. And then we have
groups that focus strictly on the overdose gas that are
occurring in our communities here in Omaha and working those
cases from the ground level, working it all the way
back up to trying to find the distributor and the
ultimate sources apply for those legal drugs.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Did you send your five bullet points to Elon Moskra
I assume you got that. I assume you got that email? Right?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah? I did you know it. You know, it's kind
of an interesting time in government right now, but I
will tell you that men and women of the DA
are absolutely committed. If they want to know what we're doing,
we're happy to share it, and it's not going to
change our mission and our focus, which is to get

(05:56):
the drug trackers off our street and try to keep
our communities safe.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Great work, great work, Steve. Thank you for the time.
Appreciate it. Have a good one. You met Steve Bell,
Special Agent. I'm at the EA office.