WEST PALM BEACH — A Lantana-area man who cut, capped and priced the drugs blamed for an infant’s overdose death will have spent more than half his life in prison by the time his sentence ends.
U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg sentenced Darnell Mendez, 32, to 30 years in federal prison Tuesday. He had already completed two stints in state prison for a handful of drug and weapons charges in his late teens and early 20s before selling the fatal dose that killed a 10-month-old girl in 2022.
The child’s mother, Kelly Ann Kirwan, told police she and her partner often emptied fentanyl capsules onto the kitchen counters of their Boynton Beach home and snorted the white powder together. She identified Mendez and his girlfriend, Samantha Yi, as their sole suppliers.
State prosecutors filed criminal charges against Kirwan, and federal prosecutors did the same to her suspected dealers. Mendez, facing life in prison if he fought the charges at trial, pleaded guilty instead.