Nestande Did Not Willingly Ingest Fentanyl

Nestande Supplied Something that Contained Fentanyl, Sheriff Says

Nearly one year after Brian Nestande was found dead in his Palm Desert home due to “multiple substance intoxication (Fentanyl and cocaine), Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told Uken Report, “We know that he did not willingly ingest this fentanyl.”

“He was supplied something, either a pill or a medication, that contained fentanyl,” Bianco said. “Our investigation is no different than other investigations in that we will continue searching to find the person that supplied him that fentanyl and if circumstances and the investigation permit, they will be arrested and prosecuted.”

To reach this conclusion, Bianco laid out the timeline of the investigation from the beginning.

The initial response of this investigation on March 6 was an “unattended death.” There was nothing that appeared on scene in his house that was out of order. Everything was just what seemed like what we would consider a normal day in the life of a person with nothing out of the ordinary at the house. It appeared obvious to deputies and to the coroner’s bureau that it was simply a medical condition and a death.

“We were absolutely shocked when the toxicology results came back with, what is obviously, a massive overdose of fentanyl,” Bianco said. “What that tells us and the amount of fentanyl that we know is in his system is that this happened quickly. My professional opinion is that Brian was not a user of fentanyl because there was a very limited amount actually in his system. It was a very high amount in his blood, which indicates a rapid overdose. With that, we know that he did not willingly ingest this fentanyl. In a typical fentanyl overdose, we will find something else that indicates the method of ingestion, and there was nothing like that.”

“So, are you saying he was murdered?” I asked incredulous.

“In a legal sense, we would charge that person with a second-degree homicide because obviously he did not commit suicide, and he did not willingly do this. We know that federally, when a person supplies another person with fentanyl and that person dies, that is a murder federally. Statewide, as you know, we are really struggling with our legislators who are just completely pro-criminal. They will not do anything to help us in this battle with fentanyl. They make it much more difficult to actually charge and convict someone of murder when they supply fentanyl to a person. But through the hard work of my investigators and our DA, we are leading the nation in the prosecutions, the successful prosecutions of persons for killing others, poisoning others with fentanyl.”

An experienced team of homicide investigators has been reassigned to fentanyl overdoses. A team of investigators, a supervisor, and a specially assigned district attorney are also on the team who concentrates on making sure that everything possible is done, not only in the identification of the person that supplied it, but also that authorities have the evidence to obtain a conviction during prosecution.

Has the investigation shown any clues as to who might have wanted him dead, I asked.

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.

“Oh my God,” I responded.

“The one that I do have to clarify, … is that with fentanyl, there doesn’t necessarily have to be that want. It’s not a premeditated murder where someone intentionally killed him, at least what we know of now. As we investigate these fentanyl overdoses that result in death, we know a lot of times the people know that they’re ingesting fentanyl or that they’re buying fentanyl, and the people selling that fentanyl or providing it know that it is fentanyl, and they know the dangers that people can die, and they do it anyway. And then there are occasions where the person really had no idea that they were taking fentanyl. They thought they were taking another type of prescription drug that, in all reality, was nothing but fentanyl and fillers to make it look like that prescription drug.”

“So do you think Brian knew what he was taking?” I asked

“Based on what we know so far in the investigation, I don’t know if we can say one way or the other,” Bianco said. “We don’t have enough evidence to support one way or the other.”

“Do you know of anybody who would have wanted him dead?” I asked.

“No, we do not,” Bianco said.

How would you rate the progress you’ve made on this case? Do you think you’re halfway there, three-quarters of the way there? Are you close to any arrests?

“That’s … something that’s probably hard to answer in a way that everyone might understand,” Bianco said. “In the law enforcement world, I would say we’re 75% there. We don’t know for sure, but we have a pretty good idea where that fentanyl came from. The problem that law enforcement always has is what we believe and what we sometimes know are not what we can prove in court. So, when we arrest someone, we arrest them believing that we have enough evidence that a jury is going to convict this person. And right now, we do not have that. We have an extremely strong suspicion, and we are working to solidify that, to obtain the evidence that would allow a prosecutor to believe that we could obtain a conviction at trial.”

“Do you suspect more than one person was involved,” I asked.

Yes,” he replied bluntly.

Given what you told me in the beginning that you entered the house and treated it as an unattended death, do you think someone cleaned up the crime scene, I asked.

“Based on what we know about fentanyl and how fentanyl overdoses work, there is a major discrepancy in what was in his system and what he died from, and what we found at the scene,” Bianco said.

“Can you elaborate on that at all?”

“No,” he said. “Like I said in the beginning… I’ll try and elaborate, but I have to be careful of not just the words that I say, but the manner in how they’re said. When we went into the house, we obviously get a call that he was deceased. We take every deceased person extremely seriously, especially one that is not currently undergoing extensive medical care. So, every death that we respond to, we treat as the potential of a homicide investigation. And as we are going through that initial investigation, there are obvious things that pop out. There are things that make you scratch your head and say, “This doesn’t seem right.” There are things that make you say, ‘Oh, I see how this is the progression of what happened here.’ We can get a good idea of how someone died based on things like what’s on the table, what they were doing at the time, were there any alcohol involved, were there any pills involved or any other medication. Was there a note? Were there signs of depression? All of those things go into the investigation.

“And then with this one, there was absolutely nothing to indicate anything other than a medical emergency such as a heart attack,” Bianco said. “There should have been evidence at the scene to indicate that. And if there were, we would’ve treated this much different from the beginning. The status of the scene of the death that we walked into did not correspond to our cause of death. With that major discrepancy, there are two different positions on this. He either knew he was taking fentanyl and didn’t know the amount, which is extremely common. Or he thought he was taking another drug that was really fentanyl, and he didn’t know. Or there is that third chance that you indicated before, he thought he was taking a specific drug that someone else intentionally put fentanyl in that caused his death. And while I say that, I can’t have the alarm bells go off saying that he was murdered. I’m just telling you that those are the things that we have to consider and that’s the evidence that we have to search for to try and determine which circumstance applied to Brian’s death.”

“How confident are you that this will be solved?

“I cannot say,” Bianco said. “I don’t want to give any indication of that. The only thing I can say is there are times where we may be 100% positive where that fentanyl came from and who that fentanyl came from, but that does not mean we would have enough evidence to support an arrest and a conviction.”

No matter which one of the scenarios applies to Nestande’s case, I hope the general public realizes the true emergency and the true seriousness of what we are experiencing with fentanyl, he said.

“It is something that we have never seen before,” Bianco said. “The emergence of fentanyl in the world of drug use is something we have never seen, and the potential for deaths have never been greater.”