WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas – An Austin man is facing a felony murder charge in Williamson County in connection with a 2025 fentanyl-related death in Thrall.<\/p>\n
33-year-old Garrett Wise was taken into custody on March 19.<\/p>\n
What they’re saying:<\/p>\n
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office is set to speak on Wise’s case today (March 25) at 1:15 p.m. at the sheriff’s office in Georgetown.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Matthew Lindemann is expected to speak alongside members of the WCSO Organized Crime Unit, the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, Angel Moms and Texas Against Fentanyl.<\/p>\n
The backstory:<\/p>\n
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office Organized Crime Unit has been actively investigating the death of Jensen Anders<\/a>.<\/p>\n 30-year-old Anders died on March 15, 2025, at a home on County Road 433 in Thrall.<\/p>\n Officials say that based on the investigation, Wise was allegedly involved in the distribution of fentanyl that resulted in Anders’ death. Wise was taken into custody after a warrant was issued.<\/p>\n Officials say Wise was found to be in possession of additional alleged fentanyl at the time he was apprehended.<\/p>\n Wise is still in the Williamson County Jail on a $500,000 bond and another charge out of Travis County for second-degree felony aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury from April 2020.<\/p>\n Fentanyl-related deaths in Texas <\/p>\n Dig deeper:<\/p>\n In 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 6<\/a>, which means in Texas, if someone distributes or manufactures fentanyl that results in someone’s death, that person can be prosecuted for murder.<\/p>\n The Texas Department of State Health Services also maintains a fentanyl dashboard<\/a>, which shows that since the law was signed, Texas has seen a decrease in fentanyl poisoning deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2023, Texas saw 2,307 deaths from fentanyl poisoning, which accounted for 45.3% of all “unintentional” drug poisoning deaths. That number dropped to 1,667 or 37.5% in 2024 and then 919 or 33% in 2025. The information is based on death certificate data with Texas DSHS.<\/p>\n The Source: Information in this report comes from the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, court records and previous reporting by FOX 7 Austin.<\/p>\n Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Williamson County<\/a>Opioid Epidemic<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas – An Austin man is facing a felony murder charge in Williamson County in connection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1046,223,85807,216,393,2538],"class_list":["post-220154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-news","tag-opioid-epidemic","tag-tx","tag-us","tag-williamson-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}