MURRIETA — A young man who joined a cohort in the supply a lethal dose of fentanyl A 16-year-old French Valley girl pleaded guilty Friday to voluntary manslaughter and was immediately sentenced to four years in state prison.

Jeremiah David Carlton, 22, of Canyon Lake, admitted to the felony charge under a plea agreement with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. In exchange for his admission, prosecutors dropped the second-degree murder charge.

During a pretrial hearing at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta on Friday, Superior Court Judge John Monterosso certified the terms of the plea agreement and imposed the sentence stipulated by the prosecution and defense.

Carlton provided the synthetic opioid to the teen, identified in court documents only as “JG,” in 2021.

His co-defendant, Raymond Gene Tyrrell, 21, of French Valley, who had been charged separately, pleaded guilty in July to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in state prison.

However, due to the amount of time he had already spent in jail, awaiting resolution of the case, along with other sentencing credits, Judge Stephen Gallon converted his prison sentence to what is called a “paper commitment.” , allowing Tyrrell to continue instantly. probation.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Rick Espinoza said Carlton and Tyrrell obtained the drugs that caused JG’s death the night of Feb. 24, 2021, at a residence in the 35000 block of Sugar Maple Street, near Leon Road.

Espinoza said officers were called to the scene to investigate two possible fentanyl poisonings and discovered that the girl and a man, whose name was not released, were in a coma. Both were taken to a regional trauma center, where the man was resuscitated but the girl succumbed to toxic ingestion.

“Detectives conducted an investigation and developed information that this was possibly a homicide,” the sergeant said, declining to elaborate on the circumstances.

Tyrrell was summoned to the Southwest Sheriff’s Station in Murrieta a day later and interviewed by detectives, after which he was taken into custody. Carlton was issued an arrest warrant and taken into custody at his residence.

None of the defendants had documented prior felony convictions.

Since February 2021, the District Attorney’s Office has charged more than 30 people across the county in connection with fentanyl poisonings.

Last November, prosecutors closed the books on the county’s first fentanyl murder case to go before a jury, culminating in the conviction of Vicente David Romero, 34, who was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. for the 2020 death of a Temecula woman. District Attorney Mike Hestrin said it was the first fentanyl murder conviction in the state.

According to public health statistics, there were 550 known fentanyl-related deaths countywide in 2023, a 9% increase from 2022, when there were 503.

Fentanyl is manufactured in laboratories abroad, primarily in China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says cartels smuggle the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine and can be mixed with any number of street narcotics and prescription medications, without the user knowing what they are consuming. Ingestion of just two milligrams can be fatal.