New Westminster police say they’ve arrested a man accused of selling drugs to a 13-year-old girl who later died of an overdose.
Police said the girl and her friend bought MDMA from a street-level drug dealer at the 22nd Street SkyTrain station on July 15.
The pair was on their way home to Port Coquitlam, when investigators said one of them went into medical distress. She later died at the Royal Columbian Hospital. Toxicology reports confirmed that she died of an MDMA overdose.
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Investigators now say they’ve arrested one suspect and are recommending two counts of trafficking in a controlled substance to Crown.
S/Sgt. Andrew Perry said it’s unclear why the public is only finding out about the girl’s death now, more than a month after the incident.
“I don’t know if there was a specific reason at the time, other than we were looking to complete the investigation and make sure… We also needed to wait for the coroner to do the toxicology report in the matter,” he said.
Trafficking of “Schedule I” drugs, which include MDMA, can be punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
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It is the second death of a of a teenager related to MDMA purchased in New Westminster this year.
Last month, police announced they were seeking trafficking charges against a suspect who allegedly sold the MDMA that killed 16-year-old Angel Loyer-Lawrence and hospitalized her friend back in May.
The incident prompted police to issue an urgent public warning about the substance, which they suspected at the time was a new, unknown drug.
Perry said while the dealers in both incidents are not the same person, they’re working to see if the dealers had a common source.
“We don’t know that at this point of time if there was a link or not.”
According to the latest numbers from the BC Coroners Service, 780 people died of illicit drug overdoses in B.C. in the first six months of the year.
Eleven of them were under the age of 18.
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