A 22-year-old Rancho Mirage man who died from fentanyl poisoning wouldn’t have had access to the pills that killed him without the direct assistance of a friend now on trial for murder, a prosecutor said Thursday, while the defendant’s attorney countered his client can’t be blamed for the victim’s death because he didn’t put the pills in his mouth.
Riley Jacob Hagar, 28, of Cathedral City is charged with second-degree murder for the death of Travis O’Brien on New Year’s Day 2022. Hagar could also be convicted of the lesser offense of involuntary manslaughter.
“Mr. Hagar is the connect. He is the plug,” Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Steve Sorensen told jurors in his closing argument in Hagar’s two-week trial at the Larson Justice Center in Indio. “Hagar told Travis the date, the location and other information for how to acquire the (fentanyl-packed) pills.”
Sorensen began his statement Wednesday afternoon and finished up Thursday morning.
The prosecutor said O’Brien “went to the person he knew could facilitate (the sale of the drugs)” — Hagar.
Arrangements were made for O’Brien to procure the drugs so that he could turn around and sell them to someone else at a profit, according to the prosecution. But in addition to selling the hundreds of M30 “blues,” O’Brien consumed several of the synthetic opiods, investigators alleged.
The young man checked into Room 149 at the Motel 6 in the 69000 block of Highway 111 in Rancho Mirage, where he intended to stay on Jan. 1, 2022, according to trial testimony.
He was found dead there that afternoon.
“Implied malice is at the heart of this case,” Sorensen said. “(Hagar) deliberately acted with conscious disregard to human life. He didn’t care.”
The prosecutor asserted that even though O’Brien acted of his own volition in taking the drugs, the defendant was the conduit for the fentanyl acquisition, and hence bears responsibility for O’Brien’s death from “acute fentanyl intoxication.”
Defense attorney Ryan Markson rejected the prosecution’s interpretation of what transpired, insisting Hagar wasn’t the one who directly provided the fentanyl and had no idea of the lethality of the particular pills that the victim ingested.
“This is the real thing. It’s as real as it gets,” Markson told the jury Thursday. “Accountability is at the essence of the justice system. O’Brien caused his own death.”
He asked jurors whether there was anything fair about trying to make his client “accountable for Travis’ death?”
The attorney reminded jurors that O’Brien contacted Hagar, and that the latter “wasn’t in the business of selling fentanyl,” but didn’t want to ignore his friend’s request for help setting up a transaction.
“My client is guilty of poor judgment, not murder,” Markson said.
Hagar, who is being held without bail at the Benoit Detention Center, was arrested in August 2022, following a monthslong investigation by the sheriff’s Overdose Death Investigations Unit.
He has no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.
Since February 2021, prosecutors have charged more than three dozen people in connection with fentanyl poisonings. Two prosecutions have resulted in murder convictions.
Preliminary health statistics indicated there were 229 suspected fentanyl-related fatalities countywide in 2025, compared to 351 confirmed poisonings in 2024, a roughly 40% decline.
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.
It’s 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.