LOS ANGELES -- In 2019, Brandon McDowell was contacted by a sophomore in college who asked to buy Percocet, a prescription painkiller. What the 20-year-old sold her instead were counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid that can be lethal in a dose as small as 2 milligrams. Hours later, Alexandra Capelouto, also 20, was dead in her Temecula, California, home.
It is an increasingly common scenario as fentanyl overdoses have become a leading cause of death for minors in the last five years, with more than 74,000 people dying in the U.S. from a synthetic opioid in 2023, according to the U.
S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. McDowell has been behind bars since 2022 with a fentanyl possession conviction.
But the Capeloutos have now won an additional $5.8 million judgment against him for the death of their daughter. “We’ve won the battle but not the war,” said Matt Capelouto, Alexandra's father.
“We still have a long ways to go in terms of holding drug dealers accountable for deaths.” Baruch Cohen, the Capeloutos' lawyer, said this was the first time a drug dealer has been held liable civilly for someone's death, to his knowledge. “Here's the hope that this judgment will be the shot that's heard around the world, so to speak,” Cohen said.
“Because if it inhibits another drug deal from going down, where the drug dealer ...
realizes that besides the jail sentence, he is a liable for millions of dollars of damages, maybe he’ll think .