Faheem Jones (Photo courtesy Outagamie County Sheriff's Office)
APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A drug dealer arrested during the investigation into the overdose death of a 2-year-old was convicted Wednesday.
Faheem Jones, 43, pleaded no contest to possession with intent to deliver fentanyl, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and recklessly endangering safety. Four other counts were dismissed but can be considered at sentencing. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 21.
Prosecutors will argue for an eight-to-12-year prison term, while the defense is free to argue what it deems appropriate, according to the plea terms outlined in court Wednesday.
Jones was arrested during the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2024, death of Rosalie Garcia at an apartment in Freedom, although he was not charged directly with her death. Officials said she died from a fentanyl overdose. It is unknown how the child accessed or ingested the drugs.
The girl’s mother, Brooke Seal, was sentenced to nine years in prison after she was convicted of child neglect-consequence is death for allowing Jones to stay in her apartment.
According to the criminal complaint, Jones told police he was at the building to do laundry. In the laundry room, police found a backpack with a stolen gun, ammunition, and a plastic bag with 1,414 pills which tested positive for fentanyl.
The complaint describes Seal’s offense as “through her failure to take action, for reasons other than poverty, did negligently fail to provide protection from exposure to the distribution or manufacture of controlled substances… so as to seriously endanger the physical, mental, or emotional health of the child, and the child suffered death as a consequence Based on the evidence located at the scene it is clear that the defendant exposed the child to Fentanyl in her bedroom and in other places in her apartment.”
Seal’s phone also contained messages showing she was trying to buy fentanyl from Jones less than 10 hours before Garcia died, according to the complaint.
After her arrest for the child’s death, Seal was taken to the Outagamie County Jail on Jan. 31, 2024. On Feb. 5, the sheriff’s department began investigating an incident from the previous weekend, where a syringe was found in a holding cell. The material inside tested positive for fentanyl and methamphetamines, according to the criminal complaint.
Surveillance video captured Seal “reaching down behind the cell toilet, in the same location the syringe was later located,” the complaint states.
During the investigation, officials reviewed the body scans from when she was booked into the jail, and one done as part of the investigation, determining she used a body cavity to get the syringe into the jail.
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