Local attorney represents family in fentanyl death lawsuit

By Doug Spoon, Editor

Note: Story has been corrected to indicate that the defendant delivered the drug to the victim at her residence.

Robert Karwin, a Menifee attorney and Menifee City Council member, is representing the family of 20-year-old Alexandra Capelouto, who died on Dec. 22, 2019 after ingesting an oxycontin pill that was found to contain the powerful drug fentanyl. Defendant Brandon Michael McDowell, 22, of Riverside also is awaiting a criminal trial after being indicted on a charge of distributing fentanyl resulting in death.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a conviction would result in a minimum 20-year sentence up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention reports that fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more lethal than morphine.

Karwin said that although it is not common for a civil lawsuit to be filed ahead of a criminal lawsuit, the filing last month was necessary because the two-year statute of limitations was coming up.

“That’s the trend – the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit oxycontin pills that contain a lethal dose of fentanyl,” Karwin said. “In distributing this, you are in the chain of liability for defects in the product.”

The lawsuit states that “the pills were manufactured using fentanyl as either a filler or total replacement for oxycontin in order to defraud purchasers and create a higher profit margin for the seller, distributor, and manufacturer of the pills. They were manufactured to look identical to pure oxycontin pills so that the alterations were undetectable by the purchaser or user.”

The wrongful death civil lawsuit also names as defendants McDowell’s parents, Justin Lee McDowell and Jill McCarthy, with whom Brandon McDowell resided.

According to the lawsuit, Brandon McDowell operated a business out of the family’s Riverside residence in which he manufactured, distributed and sold narcotics “including, but not limited to, oxycontin and fentanyl.” It maintains that Justin Lee McDowell and Jill McCarthy “either had direct knowledge of the operation of said business endeavor, negligently failed to take reasonable steps to discover the operation, or exhibited reckless disregard in remaining intentionally ignorant of said operation.”

The lawsuit further claims that on Dec. 22, 2019, Capelouto contacted Brandon McDowell via Snapchat to inquire about purchasing pure oxycontin for recreational purposes. McDowell agreed to sell pure oxycontin to Capelouto and delivered the drug to her while she was home on winter break.

The following day, Capelouto was found unresponsive by her parents. She was pronounced dead, with the cause of death listed as a lethal dose of fentanyl, traced to the pills she purchased.

“There’s no way to correctly monitor what you’re taking in,” Karwin said. “If victims in these cases consumed what they thought they were buying, they wouldn’t have died. It takes very little fentanyl to kill you.”

McDowell was indicted by the U.S. Attorney General’s Office on Dec. 15. The civil suit was filed Nov. 30 in Riverside Superior Court.