'Death dealers': Toxic-drug traffickers should face murder charges, victims' families say
Families ask for accountability as California law warns drug dealers next charge could be murder
Two weeks before Briana Martin died, her boyfriend called police to warn that Nanaimo's drug dealers were becoming more "aggressive."
Steven Whitehead had already done what he could to keep the 27-year-old away from the toxic drugs that were repeatedly causing her to overdose — even reaching out at one point to a drug dealer he knew to ask for help.
That dealer said he'd stop selling to Martin, writing in a text that he would "block Bree's number and never deal with her."
"Trust me," the dealer wrote. "I don't want the dramas or the karma on me as well."
But another dealer stepped in, and on the morning of March 31, 2024, Whitehead found Martin unresponsive in bed in the townhouse they shared.
Sitting in his kitchen almost a year later, Whitehead said he still doesn't know who sold her the combination of fentanyl and benzodiazepine that the coroner told him killed her.
"If they do find them and put them in jail, it would just be a hollow victory because another person would just take their place and another Briana would die," Whitehead said.
"Do I want revenge, or do I want solutions and this point? I've been angry for so long. I was angry for so long at that person."
Warrant for cell phone
As threats to tie U.S. tariffs to the flow of fentanyl highlight efforts to curb the supply of the deadly drug, Martin's case provides a window into both the devastation caused by the toxic drug crisis and efforts to bring accountability to those who deal in death.
And a simple question — when is drug dealing murder? — led CBC News to a father in California who has channeled anger over his daughter's death into a newly passed law paving the way for more serious charges against individuals directly linked to an overdose death.
According to the B.C. Coroner's Service, Nanaimo recorded 94 tainted drug deaths last year, down from 114 in 2023 — a drop that mirrors a recent decrease in toxic drug deaths across the province.
But the scars of the years-long opioid epidemic are evident on the streets of the Vancouver Island city, which has a population of about 104,000 people.
CBC News obtained a search warrant sworn two weeks after Martin's death to search her cell phone for evidence that might lead to her dealer.
"I believe that call logs from Martin's phone would show who Martin may have been purchasing drugs from in the past months and in the days leading up to her death," RCMP Const. Kathleen Devoe wrote in an application to obtain the warrant.
"I believe that the contact information on the device will indicate people that Martin communicated with in the Nanaimo drug trade. I believe that I will be able to match these contacts with known drug sellers and potentially identify who sold Martin drugs."
The search warrant says Martin struggled with addiction for years, chronicling Whitehead's increasing alarm as he wrote down licence plates that police later traced to B.C.'s gang conflict.
"Whitehead said she was buying from someone new when she overdosed and was not the same people she was buying from when he jotted down the plates," the warrant says.
"Some of the drug dealers were trying to help Martin by not selling to her, but then she would go to someone new to get it."
Alexandra's Law
If Whitehead is uncertain about what justice might look like in Martin's death, her mother doesn't mince words. She made clear over the phone that she wants someone to pay.
She had agreed to sit down for an interview, but grew so despondent about her daughter's death in recent months that she said she couldn't bring herself to meet.
Matt Capelouto said he can understand those emotions.
The California man's 20-year-old daughter Alexandra was looking for Percocet in 2019 when she bought what she was told was oxycodone, but turned out to be fentanyl.
"My wife found her dead in bed the next morning," Capelouto said.
"From that point forward, our life was certainly shattered and forever changed."
As in Martin's case, police also looked to Alexandra's phone for evidence that might lead to a drug dealer.
The 25-year-old who sold her the drug was ultimately sentenced to nine years in federal prison for possession with intention to distribute fentanyl, and the Capelouto family also won a $5.8 million civil judgment against him.
Capelouto calls fentanyl traffickers "death dealers"
As he sees it, his daughter's death was no different from a poisoning, and he started asking what would be needed for prosecutors to charge dealers with murder instead of drug charges.
"The reality is that a defence for a drug dealer right now is to say I simply didn't know that the drugs were going to kill the person," Capelouto explained.
"And unless law enforcement or prosecutors can prove otherwise, then they basically aren't going to be held accountable for the death."
Alexandra's Law was modelled on a warning given to impaired drivers that if they continue to drive drunk and cause a death, they can be charged with murder.
Capelouto says the new law functions as a last-chance "admonishment" for anyone convicted of a drug offence: the drugs they're dealing can kill and if someone dies, they're liable for the harshest penalty the justice system can deliver.
"You abide by the warning — you have nothing to worry about," says Capelouto.
"If you disregard that warning and you continue to deal deadly drugs and somebody dies as a result — now prosecutors have that evidence."
The initiative was part of a raft of changes to California's justice system passed by voters last fall.
'As dangerous to Canadians as the presence of firearms'
Canadian courts have been grappling with cases involving death linked to fentanyl for the better part of a decade, as charges for manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death associated with trafficking show up with increasing frequency.
A review of cases shows an evolution in sentences ranging from 18 months to 10 years. In one 2023 case, a judge said appeal courts have made it clear that sentences for trafficking fentanyl "need to go up and not down."
Many accused have been struggling with addiction themselves. One woman who got three years for criminal negligence causing death claimed she was unaware that she was selling fentanyl rather than cocaine.
In another case, a man convicted of the same charge was carrying both fentanyl and cocaine in his pockets; he argued that he hadn't intentionally misled his victim.
Other cases have involved people who purchased drugs for friends.
And in one case, a man who got 30 months for manslaughter for trafficking fentanyl pointed out that he tried to save his victim's life by calling emergency services.
In a 2023 decision involving an eight-year sentence for manslaughter for a dealer who took "no responsibility" for his offences, Ontario Superior Court Justice Cary Boswell said harsher penalties are justified where drug dealing ends in death.
"In my view, it would be a mistake to understate the aggravating nature of the trafficking of fentanyl," the judge wrote.
"It is time to recognize that the presence of fentanyl in our communities is as dangerous to Canadians as the presence of firearms and thus should be approached with a commensurate level of concern."
Burden of proof
As a former head of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) drug squad and a current city councillor, former B.C. solicitor general Kash Heed said he sees the toxic drug problem from every angle — most importantly as the parent of a young daughter.
"If someone sold her something that caused harm to her, as a parent ... I would be so broken I would want to seek vengeance against that individual," he said.
In 2001, Heed testified before the Senate about the VPD's then-policy not to pursue simple cannabis possession charges, instead focusing "on the person making a profit, not on the addicted user."
He recently published a column arguing that "we cannot arrest our way out of our drug problem."
Heed argues Canadians need comprehensive policies to address the demand driving the seemingly bottomless market for drugs, starting with the need for treatment spaces.
Still, he'd like to see the courts go after dealers who "knowingly" sell drugs that kill people, but fears the burden of proof is often too great and the judicial resources too thin to land cases for criminal negligence or manslaughter — let alone murder.
He says he thinks Alexandra's Law sounds like a small, but important piece of a bigger puzzle.
"Why shouldn't we be able to do that right now?" he said.
"What precludes [police] right now from documenting the fact that we're warning you that if someone dies because you sold them fentanyl, because you sold them an opioid that was tainted, you're going to be put in front of the criminal justice system and prosecuted to the fullest extent?"
'Only thing that's on their mind is money'
In a bus shelter near Nanaimo's downtown, Bruce Brown estimated he has overdosed 28 times — he's 26 years old.
He said many of the dealers he knows are trying to navigate the same horrors of addiction as him.
"Once they're addicted, they kind of have no choice but to feed their habit, so they end up becoming dealers themselves," he said.
Shaking his head, Brown says he doesn't think charging dealers with murder would make any difference.
"I think the only thing that's on their mind is money."
Brown says he's certain he'll make it to 30. But he keeps his name written on his hand in red ink just in case a paramedic — or a coroner — needs to know who he is.
No one has been charged directly in Briana Martin's death, but Nanaimo RCMP said the investigation became part of another file that resulted in drug possession and drug trafficking charges against two men last month.
Both men have been released pending the outcome of their cases.
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