|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
COLUMBUS, Ohio (BFMG) — Four people were sentenced Monday in connection with the 2023 overdose death of a 13-year-old boy on the city’s West Side.
Police were called on Sept. 5, 2023, to a home on North Warren Avenue in the North Hilltop neighborhood for a report of an unresponsive child. When first responders arrived, they found the grandson of 58-year-old Ema Loza De Leon dead inside the home. Prosecutors said the child’s death was caused by fentanyl and cocaine, and officers found narcotics throughout the house, including near where the boy’s body was discovered.
Prosecutors said the four defendants were tied to thousands of grams of drugs seized from their homes, including fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin.
Jose Garcia-Huerta, 26, was sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of trafficking in a fentanyl-related compound and one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity. His sentence also covers an unrelated 2021 case in which he sold fentanyl to an undercover Franklin County Sheriff’s Office detective.
Loza De Leon was sentenced to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, endangering children, two counts of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, three counts of trafficking in cocaine and seven counts of trafficking in fentanyl.
Another defendant, 22-year-old Lezly Avila, pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and possession of fentanyl and was sentenced to seven years and 11 months in prison.
The fourth defendant, Jovany Raudel-Avila, who was 18 at the time of the offenses, received a 12-year suspended sentence and was placed on probation.
