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A federal judge in Newark ordered Mauricio Gutierrez, 50, of Somerset held following an initial court appearance on charges of distributing drugs that killed users.
Special agents of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations Newark took custody of Gutierrez after he was busted selling coke in Piscataway on Thursday, Sept. 28, authorities said.
One of the buyers shared it with two other people that fateful June 2022 day, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
All three were found unresponsive soon after in a Jeep parked in the lot of a North Brunswick bar, the U.S. attorney said. Responding police found powdered fentanyl in the Jeep and good Samaritans trying to revive the victims, he said.
The officers administered Narcan before the trio were rushed to a nearby hospital.
Two of the victims were pronounced dead on arrival. The third died on June 24, two days after the incident.
The same night as that incident, a user who bought from Gutierrez was found slumped dead over the wheel in his car in Franklin Township. Powdered fentanyl was also found in the vehicle, Sellinger said.
“Subsequent toxicology reports determined that the victims had lethal amounts of fentanyl in their blood,” the U.S. attorney said.
Authorities initially tied Gutierrez to the ODs through text messages he’d sent to three of the victims, according to a complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark.
Investigators were watching as Gutierrez sold cocaine in Piscataway on Wednesday, Sept. 27, the complaint says.
They quickly moved in and seized him, then found cocaine stashed in a phony soda can, it says.
Sellinger credited special agents of Homeland Security Investigations Newark with the investigation leading to the charges. He also thanked North Brunswick and Franklin Township police for their assistance.
Handling the case for the government is Shawn Barnes, the chief of Sellinger’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force’s Narcotics Unit in Newark, and fellow unit member Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Fell.
“Gutierrez, in pursuit of financial gain, led to the loss of four lives and left behind a devastated wake of families,” said Robert Kurtz, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Newark said.
His arrest, Kurtz said, is “a testament to what can be done through steadfast collaboration and cooperation between federal, state, county and local law enforcement.”
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