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UPDATE: An ex-con from Garfield who served time for a botched drug deal that led to the shooting of an undercover police officer was arrested on Thursday and charged with causing the overdose death of a 30-year-old user late last summer.
Melvin Guzman, 29, is charged with strict liability in the drug-induced death of Ivan Santiago of Passaic last Sept. 17, Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella announced on March 28.
Santiago and another user were hospitalized after overdosing at a home on Lincoln Place, the prosecutor said. He was pronounced dead soon after.
“A six-month investigation by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and the Garfield Police Department into the death of Ivan Santiago and the related drug activity revealed that [Guzman] distributed a fatal dose of narcotics to the victim, causing his death,” Musella said.
Guzman was arrested and charged on Thursday, then sent to the Bergen County Jail to await a first appearance in Central Judicial Processing Court in Hackensack.
Guzman is the second person charged in connection with Santiago’s death. The first, Juhaan J. Hammond, 30, has remained held in the county lockup since his arrest four days later.
Guzman was arrested in April 2014 after an undercover police officer was shot and wounded during a drug deal at a shopping center on Passaic Street in Garfield.
Guzman got into the officer’s car not knowing he was actually with law enforcement. He was carrying a bag of oregano that he intended to pass off as pot for $400.
As the two spoke, an accomplice, ex-con Rafael “King Lucifer” Vasquez, walked up to the driver’s side window and shot the officer in the right hip and lower left leg in a scuffle.
Seven other officers who were standing by rushed to their colleague’s aid. Two of them shot and wounded Vasquez, then arrested him and Guzman. A third defendant ran and was caught on the Garden State Parkway.
Vasquez was sentenced to 15 years in state prison in exchange for a guilty plea to attempted murder.
Guzman, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting a robbery and was sentenced to a mandatory six-year minimum as part of his deal.
Guzman received credit for 737 days he spent in the Bergen County Jail, then served the remaining four years in state prison before being released in November 2020.
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