Keithrick Carter, 22, was arrested on May 21, 2025, pleaded guilty on Feb. 19\u00a0and was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman,\u00a0the release said. He is a drug dealer who primarily sold blue \u201cM30\u201d fentanyl pills and marijuana, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The minimum federal sentence for distributing\u00a0fentanyl resulting in death is 20 years, according to the federal criminal code.<\/p>\n
The investigation began after a 24-year-old Leander man was found dead in his apartment on March 23, 2023, the release said. It did not include the man’s name. Leander police found an unlabeled pill bottle containing one blue \u201cM30\u201d pill and marijuana in the man’s bathroom, the release said. Autopsy results showed the man died from fentanyl poisoning, according to the release. A review of the man’s phone revealed a text exchange\u00a0between\u00a0him and Carter, the release said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis administration has made clear that protecting Americans from the fentanyl crisis is a national priority, and we are at the front of that fight every day in this district,\u201d U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons said in the release. \u201cKeithrick Carter knowingly sold poison in a pill bottle to a young man in our community. He was held directly responsible for that young man\u2019s death and will now spend the next 20 years of his life in federal prison.<\/p>\n
“However, no measure of manmade justice can assuage the pain felt by the victim\u2019s family in this case,” Simmons said. “The best we can do is to remove the defendant from society so that he cannot inflict the same level of grief on any other families in our community.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Drug Enforcement Administration, the Leander Police Department and the Austin Police Department investigated the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keithrick Carter, 22, was arrested on May 21, 2025, pleaded guilty on Feb. 19\u00a0and was sentenced Thursday by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-352746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352746","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=352746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}