A Pittsburg man has been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for selling pills laced with fentanyl that killed a Walnut Creek woman in 2020.
Gage Pascoe, 23, was sentenced in federal court to 68 months in prison after pleading guilty in February to fentanyl distribution.
The U.S. District Court judge who sentenced Pascoe also ordered him to serve five years of supervision after he is released from prison and to pay for funeral costs for the victim’s family.
Pascoe met with the victim, a Walnut Creek woman with whom he’d attended high school, on the night of June 16, 2020, to sell her oxycodone M30 pills, according to his guilty plea.
The woman was found dead in her bed the following morning while the bag of pills was found in her bedroom. Lab tests later determined the pills were laced with fentanyl, which caused her to overdose.
A sentencing memorandum from federal prosecutors argued that Pascoe did not intend to cause the woman to overdose, but that he acted recklessly by selling the pills and “played Russian roulette” with her life.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California oversaw the case. The case was investigated by federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Walnut Creek Police Department.
So a life is worth five and a half years for a drug pusher. How long of a sentence would he have received if he had shot her. How many other people did he kill?
+ 1
Ricardoh,
He got 68-months because this was a Federal Court case, had this bin in State Court.
If you kill someone in a “hit- and-run” and have no priors that’ll get you a 2-year sentence, with priors that’ll get you a 4-year sentence, and then those sentences will be reduced in State Court.
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No sympathy for illicit drug users and drug dealers.
You know I was thinking the same. I really agree! People that take street drugs are gambling with their life. They’re the ones that ‘pulled the trigger’ on themselves.
👍🏻
68 months, what a joke.
So he will spend 2 years in a county jail cuz the prisons are full and they will let him go.
this is justice in Joe Biden and Gavin’s world
Nope, he will serve at least 85% of his sentence, and at a Federal facility not county jail.
Mom
That’s still not justice.
.. that’s it?! 68 months?! this is another reason we have so much crime…. very sad on our prosecutors part
Was surprised by headline then saw it was FEDERAL COURT and then wasn’t surprised at all !
At FEDERAL level there is deterrence of crime thru incarceration.
they charged with a distribution crime because a murder case would have been way tougher to prove in court. Causation was likely a BIG issue with the lawyers.
Wow, I use to go to school with that kid @ foothill middle back in 2010.. And Olivia (the girl that ODd).. crazy to see how life plays out as you get older.. rip Olivia.
Sad all the way around. Never heard about this until now – what Olivia is it that passed away?