A California guy known as “Frog” is being charged with selling fentanyl that was passed off as cocaine at a Super Bowl party, killing four of his buddies.
According to an FBI press statement, Frog, whose actual name is Timothy Austin Pannell, was taken into custody on April 25 and is accused of felony fentanyl distribution.
The El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office said that five friends got together at a house in South Lake Tahoe on February 11, 2024, to host a Super Bowl party. The friends began taking what they believed to be cocaine as the evening wore on. Four of them would be dead before daybreak.
The district attorney’s office claims that Pannell tried several times to warn the friend group after realizing he was providing them with fentanyl. According to an inquiry, he drove by their neighborhood and made at least 17 calls to them.
However, it was too late. On February 12, at around nine in the morning, South Lake Tahoe police got a 911 call indicating that there were several overdoses at the residence. Officers discovered Abraham Lemus, 32, Keely Pereira, 33, Clifford Joy, 30, and Adam Joy, 35, all deceased from what appeared to be overdoses, according to SFGATE reporting.
Three of their bodies were discovered: one in the kitchen, one in an upstairs bedroom, and two by the couch. According to the publication, a fifth, unidentified individual was transported to a neighboring hospital and lived.
“They were flat-out poisoned and murdered,” Clifford and Adam’s mother Daisy Joy Bankofier told the Record Courier.
The outlet claims that Katrina Joy was present that evening. She is Clifford’s wife, but she didn’t use any alleged cocaine that evening. She remembered waking up the following morning after falling asleep prior to their purchasing the medications.
Katrina informed the outlet that she tried CPR on her husband Clifford and advised the other survivors to contact 911 and perform CPR on another victim. “I asked him to do CPR on Keely while I did CPR on Cliff,” Katrina said to the outlet.
According to the district attorney’s statement, Pannell is accused of distributing fentanyl in the federal lawsuit.
Prosecutors claimed in their statement that Pannell believed he was dealing cocaine and tried to notify the victims that he had unintentionally given them fentanyl after realizing his error, which is why authorities did not charge him with homicide.
“They’re not drug addicts,” Katrina said to the Record Courier. “They’re not even regular users. They just made a bad choice in a moment of wanting to have a little fun with kind of a socially acceptable party drug. Unfortunately this one costs a lot more than most people realize that it can.”
The publications state that Pannell is scheduled to appear in court on May 12.
