Pretrial motions got underway Wednesday ahead of jury selection for the trial of a man accused of providing a deadly dose of fentanyl to a 22-year-old Rancho Mirage resident on New Year’s Day 2022.
Riley Jacob Hagar, 28, of Cathedral City is charged with second-degree murder for the death of Travis O’Brien.
On Wednesday, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office and Hagar’s attorney submitted pretrial motions to Superior Court Judge Kristi Hester at the Larson Justice Center, where jury selection was likely to get underway next week due to the state-recognized Lincoln’s Birthday holiday falling on Thursday. The courthouses will be closed that day.
The defendant was arrested in August 2022, following a months-long investigation by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s Overdose Death Investigations Unit,
Sgt. Ryan Marcuse said that on the afternoon of Jan. 1, 2022, deputies were called to a property in the 69000 block of Highway 111, where the young man was discovered unconscious and presumed dead.
Paramedics arrived a short time later and confirmed he had died at the scene.
Based on undisclosed evidence amassed over the ensuing months, Hagar was identified as the supplier who allegedly sold the fentanyl that precipitated O’Brien’s death, according to Marcuse.
The defendant, who has no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County, is being held without bail at the Benoit Detention Center in Indio.
Since February 2021, prosecutors have charged around three dozen people in connection with fentanyl poisonings. Two prosecutions have resulted in murder convictions.
Public health statistics indicated there were 328 known fentanyl-related fatalities countywide in 2024, compared to 571 in 2023, a 42% decline. Numbers for 2025 haven’t been finalized.
Fentanyl is manufactured in overseas labs, principally in China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says the 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 recipient knowing what he or she is consuming. Ingestion of only two milligrams can be fatal.