Officials at the John Benoit Detention Center discovered fentanyl and meth in mail addressed to an inmate.
A 33-year-old Indio woman was arrested as the suspect in the crime.
Members of the detention center's Correctional Intelligence Bureau (CIB) contacted the Riverside County Sheriff's Department (RCSD) on Jan. 7, Sgt. David Aldrich said in a press release from the RCSD. The CIB intercepted mail saturated with fentanyl and methamphetamine. The sender's name and return address varied with each piece of mail but the mail was addressed to a specific inmate.
Drug Enforcement Administration image of fentanyl tablets
| dea.gov/
As a result of this discovery, the CIB worked with the Thermal Station Investigations Bureau on an investigation that led to the identification of Amy Buenrostro as the suspect, according to Aldrich.
Buenrostro was located on Jan. 25 at 4:30 p.m. at a residence in Indio on the 44500 block of Sun Gold Street, the press release noted. A warrant was authored by the Thermal investigators and the home was searched by the Coachella Valley Narcotics Task Force. At that time, Buenrostro was taken into custody without incident and booked at the John Benoit Detention Center.
Faces of Fentanyl is a website that provides information about fentanyl, treatment resources, and overdose data for Riverside County. The website noted that 401 people died from fentanyl overdoses last year. Of those fatalities, 315 victims were male and 86 were female.
Forty-nine of those overdoses claimed the lives of people ages 15 to 24, 206 overdoses involved people ages 25 to 44, 130 fell between the ages 45 and 64, and 15 deaths occurred in people ages 65 to 74. A cocktail of fentanyl mixed with meth was fatal in 195 of the overdoses.