Police have arrested three people in connection with the
overdose death of a 35-year-old Riverside man last November, and all three suspects have been charged with murder.
It’s the latest case in which the
district attorney has filed murder charges against the alleged suppliers of fentanyl to those who later die from overdoses.
“It’s dangerous,” said Marilyn Cross, the mother of overdose victim Christopher Lucia. “They don’t know what they’re being given. They think they’re going to take something to get high, or get out of pain, and then that’s it. Their heart stops, they stop breathing and they’re gone.”
Cross said her son didn’t use fentanyl to get high, but to deal with incredible pain that he’d been suffering for years.
“He had a shoulder injury and he had surgery, and he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis,” Cross said. “He had swelling in all the joints and redness on the fingers.”
But Cross said doctors eventually told him despite the pain, they would no longer prescribe him the medication he was using.