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George Rayford, 39, must serve at least 85 percent of the sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
Rayford sold crack cocaine laced with fentanyl from his Whelan Place home on Dec. 22, 2017. Fentanyl is an opioid several times more potent than heroin.
An investigation revealed the drugs were responsible for the deaths of Nicole Taylor, 41; Kacina Vanderburg, 53; and 67-year-old Harold Johnston. The victims were all from Rahway.
Several other people are believed to have overdosed but survived, including some revived with Naloxone, according to the investigation launched by the Rahway Police Department and Detective James Crowell. The Union County Sheriff and Union County Homicide Task Force as well as Woodbridge police eventually assisted in the expanding investigation.
Fentanyl was found in fewer than 20 percent of the county’s overdose victims in 2015, a figure that jumped to 80 percent by 2018. Rayford’s case, however, was the one of the first instances of crack being mixed with fentanyl.
Rayford pleaded guilty in January to three counts of strict liability for a drug-induced death.
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