Man who supplied fatal fentanyl dose to Temecula man in '22 gets 11 years

A 53-year-old man who sold a lethal dose of fentanyl to a Temecula resident was bound for state prison for 11 years after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter.

Kevin Michael Bryant of Carlsbad pleaded guilty to the felony count on Friday under a negotiated agreement with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. In exchange for Bryant’s admission, prosecutors dropped a seconddegree murder charge.

Bryant provided Cameron Trask, 43, with the fentanyl-laced pills that precipitated his death on Feb. 12, 2022.

According to sheriff’s Sgt. Sean Liebrand, patrol deputies were called to a business in the 27500 block of Jefferson Avenue in Temecula and found Trask dead.

Liebrand said an autopsy that was performed soon afterward confirmed that the victim “died as a result of fentanyl poisoning,” at which point homicide detectives took over the investigation and “worked relentlessly” until identifying Bryant “as the suspect responsible for selling the fentanyl that killed Trask.”

Bryant was taken into custody at the San Ysidro Port of Entry along the U.s.-mexico border in February 2023.

Bryant is one of more than two dozen individuals charged in connection with fentanyl-induced deaths in Riverside County since February 2021.

The county Department of Public Health says there were 388 confirmed fentanyl-related fatalities countywide in 2023, a 23% decline from 2022 when there were 503.

Fentanyl is manufactured in overseas labs, principally in China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which says the synthetic opioid is smuggled across the U.s.-mexico border by cartels.

The drug is 80-100 times more potent than

morphine and can be mixed into any number of street narcotics and prescription drugs without a user knowing what he or she is consuming. Ingestion of only two milligrams can be fatal.

Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans 18 to 45 years old.