{"id":432365,"date":"2026-09-11T02:12:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/432365\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T02:12:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:12:40","slug":"man-charged-with-murder-in-fentanyl-related-death-in-south-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/432365\/","title":{"rendered":"Man charged with murder in fentanyl-related death in South Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" article <\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas – A man was arrested and charged with murder in connection to a fentanyl-related death in South Austin.<\/p>\n

This is being investigated as Austin’s 56th homicide of the year.<\/p>\n

Austin’s 56th murder investigation <\/p>\n

The backstory:<\/p>\n

Police said on June 3, around 5:55 p.m., officers responded to a check welfare call in the 6600 block of Willow Way. The caller said her brother appeared to be dead and wouldn’t wake up.<\/p>\n

When officers arrived, firefighters were on the scene attempting life-saving measures on the victim. The victim, Diego Rocha, was later pronounced dead.<\/p>\n

An autopsy was conducted on Rocha and showed his cause of death to be “toxic effects of fentanyl and alprazolam.”<\/p>\n

An investigation later revealed that 44-year-old Rodney Rawlings provided drugs to Rocha which resulted in his death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rawlings was arrested and charged with murder.<\/p>\n

What you can do:<\/p>\n

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Austin Police at 512-974-TIPS. You may submit your tip anonymously through the Capital Area Crime Stoppers Program by visiting austincrimestoppers.org<\/a> or calling 512-472-8477<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Source: Information from an Austin Police Department press release on Sept. 10<\/p>\n

South Austin<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"article AUSTIN, Texas – A man was arrested and charged with murder in connection to a fentanyl-related death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1046,223,4522,394,216,393],"class_list":["post-432365","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-south-austin","tag-travis-county","tag-tx","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432365","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=432365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}