3 sentenced for separate fentanyl crimes. One led Kennewick police on 10-mph car chase

Three people who participated in fentanyl drug selling operations in the Tri-Cities area have been sentenced to five or six years in prison each by U.S. Judge Mary Dimke.

One was a woman who told police when she was arrested that she had sold 16,000 fentanyl pills, unbeknownst to Tri-Cities law enforcement, to one of their confidential sources.

Another woman was the second defendant to be sentenced in a large drug trafficking operation that used a west Kennewick landscaping business as a front.

The other defendant was arrested after he led Kennewick police on a 10 mph, hour-long chase on four flat tires after driving through spike strips. He had drugs in his car.

Doyle: 5 years prison

Daniel James Doyle, 26, was sentenced to five years in prison and five years probation for possessing fentanyl with intent to deliver, being a methamphetamine user in possession of a firearm, and possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of meth.

He was facing the fentanyl charges from a February 2021 arrest, plus four warrants for misdemeanors and a flight from police, when he led Kennewick police on a second chase in July 2021.

Detectives had set up spike strips near 27th Avenue and South Olympia Street, but he took off and drove over the spikes.

He led police on a 10 to 15 mph chase that lasted an hour, with spike strips lodged in the bottom of his car before police stopped the chase just after midnight, according to police reports.

He was arrested at a motel within 24 hours. A search of his car found 417 grams of pure meth and 293 grams of pills containing fentanyl, plus a digital scale and drug packaging materials, according to federal court documents.

Doyle’s attorney, Paul Shelton, said Doyle had a serious methamphetamine addiction that started the year he got divorced. Doyle started selling fentanyl to support his meth habit, Shelton said.

Assistant U.S. attorney Timothy Ohms said in a court hearing that Doyle’s goal was to be a high level fentanyl distributor. More than 1,000 fentanyl pills were found in one search, he said.

Doyle endangered the community when he fled from police twice, and each fentanyl pill he sold could have destroyed someone’s life, Ohms said.

The judge called Doyle’s actions “incredibly serious” and pointed out that fentanyl is causing overdose deaths and makes people unable to work and care for their children.

The case was unusual because Doyle had more support and resources than most who come before her in drug cases, she said.

His parents, two sisters, his young son and a friend gave statements on his good character before he was sentenced and he had 23 letters of support submitted to the court, including from a former teacher, a coworker, family and his housemates at a nonprofit Oxford House for sober living.

After some time in jail and successful completion of inpatient treatment, he has been sober for 15 months, Doyle told the judge.

“It blows my mind that I lived that lifestyle,” he said about his crimes.

Since his last arrest he has gained full custody of his two oldest children, is working a union laborer job and is coaching a child’s baseball team.

He understands the harm that fentanyl can do, particularly after a friend died from drug use, he said.

But he is not aware of anyone who died due to the drugs he sold, he said.

The judge allowed him to self-report to start his prison term.

Dimke told him she was confident he would not be back in federal court again.

Doyle also was sentenced to 59 days in jail for one of his attempting to elude charges, with other charges dismissed as the federal court system took over prosecution.

Casares: 6 years prison

Gabriela Casares, also known as Gabriela Rosas, was sentenced to six years in prison and five years probation for selling fentanyl in the Tri-Cities.

She admitted selling more than 16,000 fentanyl lace pills to a confidential source for the Tri-Cities Metro Drug Task Force, without law enforcement knowledge, in the week before she was arrested on Oct. 20, 2022.

An arrest warrant was issued for the confidential source, who is not named in court documents, that day.

The confidential informant had earlier arranged to buy fentanyl pills from Casares under law enforcement supervision on two occasions.

He had arranged the buys with Casares, and she had sent a man to exchange the drugs for money in the Tri-Cities, according to court documents.

In June 2022 Casares arranged to sell the confidential source 1,000 fentanyl pills for $3,500. The next month the confidential source bought 1,000 fentanyl-laced pills through Casares.

A search of Casares’s home found five guns, 1,000 fentanyl-laced pills and about $300.

A search of the confidential source’s homes found about 14,000 fentanyl-lace pills and about 1.6 pounds of meth.

Casares’s mother, aunt and son spoke on her behalf, either at the sentencing hearing or in letters submitted to the judge.

Her mother said she was an amazing young woman, who went out of her way to help the elderly, but had lost her way.

Rodriguez: 5 years prison

Leticia Rodriguez was a driver for a large drug trafficking operation selling in Eastern Washington that used the landscaping business Affordable Landscaping in Kennewick as a front.

The second of eight defendants in the case to be sentenced, she was given five years in prison and five years probation.

Rodriguez and other drivers would take cash to Arizona and California and then drive back with large quantities of cocaine, fentanyl and methamphatamine.

During each trip the driver would pick up an average 16 kilos of cocaine, 30,000 to 40,000 fentanyl-laced pills and/or kilos of methamphetamine, according to court documents.

The previous sentence in the case was for Jose Mendoza-Ruelas, 38. He was sentenced to over 12 years in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute substantial quantities of methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine.

A search of several houses and the landscaping business on the 3800 block of West Kennewick Avenue found loaded assault rifles hanging on the wall; more than $165,000, much of it hidden within a wall; a digital money counter; a 45-caliber pistol and materials often used for street level drug packaging.

Mendoza-Ruelas was not among the members of the drug trafficking organization that lived at the Kennewick compound, but told a law enforcement source that he could sell him up 60,000 fentanyl-laced pills in addition to large quantities of meth, according to court documents.