A woman accused of supplying a 19-year-old Eastvale resident with a deadly dose of fentanyl is slated to return to court next week.
Angelina Judena Ortega, 25, of Eastvale was arrested last week following a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department investigation into the death of Kailey Pearson earlier this year.
Ortega is charged with second-degree murder.
She pleaded not guilty during an arraignment Tuesday before Superior Court Judge Melissa Hale, who scheduled a felony settlement conference for Sept. 18 at the Riverside Hall of Justice.
The defendant is being held at the Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. The bail wasn’t specified.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Sean Liebrand said deputies and paramedics were called to Pearson’s residence in the 14200 block of Grayling Drive, just west of Archibald Avenue, on the morning of Jan. 8 to investigate reports of a comatose woman.
They found Pearson unconscious and attempted resuscitative measures, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
“The case was immediately assumed by the Overdose Death Investigations & Narcotics Unit,” Liebrand said. “Following a thorough investigation, it was determined that Pearson died as a result of fentanyl and xylazine poisoning. ODIN investigators worked diligently to identify the individual responsible for distributing the lethal narcotics … Angelina Ortega.”
The defendant was taken into custody without incident on Sept. 5 at a property on Mission Boulevard in Jurupa Valley.
She has no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County. It was unclear how she and the victim were acquainted.
Since February 2021, county prosecutors have charged almost 40 people in connection with fentanyl poisonings.
In November 2023, the D.A.’s office closed the books on the county’s first fentanyl murder case to go before a jury, culminating in the conviction of 34-year-old Vicente David Romero, who was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for the 2020 death of a Temecula woman.
Public health statistics indicated there were 328 known fentanyl-related fatalities countywide in 2024, compared to 571 in 2023, a 42% decline
Fentanyl is manufactured in overseas labs, principally in China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says the synthetic opioid is smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border by cartels.
Fentanyl is 80-100 times more potent than morphine and can be mixed into any number of street narcotics and prescription drugs, without a user knowing what he or she is consuming. Ingestion of only two milligrams can be fatal.