The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department confirmed it is still investigating the death of former Coachella Valley state representative Brian Nestandewho succumbed to a lethal dose of fentanyl and cocaine.
The sheriff’s department declined to disclose what aspects of the death it is investigating, and county prosecutors said no charges have been filed. In previous cases, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin has brought murder charges against people who provided lethal doses of fentanyl.
A full autopsy report from the county medical examiner, obtained by The Desert Sun, sheds more light on Nestande’s death and how it was discovered.
And the case highlights the widespread nature of the fentanyl epidemic.
Coachella Mayor and Others Found Body
The autopsy report details how Nestande’s body was found by a group of his friends that included Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez, who is also chief of staff for Riverside County Supervisor V. Manuel Perez.
Hernandez told a sheriff’s deputy that he and a group of friends went to Nestande’s Palm Desert home to check on him after having lunch together and discovered that none of them had heard from Nestande in several days.
Hernandez said he had last seen Nestande three days earlier when they met for breakfast with other friends, at which point Hernandez thought Nestande looked healthy.
Hernandez and his friends entered the house through the unlocked back door and found Nestande unconscious on the floor of a room that appeared to have been set up as an office.
The cause of death listed in the autopsy examination report is “Multiple Substance Intoxication (Fentanyl, Cocaine).”
Forensic pathologist Scott A. Luzi wrote that toxicology tests showed an engineered form of fentanyl and a cocaine metabolite in Nestande’s blood. Luzi added that Nestande’s death was the result of a “cardiac arrhythmia” caused by the medications. He also wrote that Nestande’s body showed signs of hypertension and heart disease, which may have contributed to her death.
The report states that both Hernandez and Nestande’s wife, Gina Nestande, told the coroner that Nestande’s family had a history of heart problems. However, Gina said that she was not aware that Nestande had heart problems, although she reported that he did not see the doctor regularly.
Nestande had high levels of fentanyl in his blood
Wendy Hetherington, who works on overdose awareness at Riverside University Health System, said the amount of fentanyl detected in Nestande’s blood was significantly above the therapeutic fentanyl level of 0.2 ng per milliliter. The therapeutic level, she explained, is the amount considered safe for doctors to prescribe for pain control.
The toxicology report completed after Nestande’s autopsy states that her blood contained fentanyl at a concentration of 13.6 nanograms (ng) per milliliter of fentanyl and 5.0 ng per milliliter of norfentanyl, which she described as what fentanyl turns into. when it is processed by the body.
Hetherington, chief of the health system’s epidemiology and program evaluation branch, said the two relatively close numbers suggest the body had some time to process the fentanyl, while a lower level of norfentanyl would indicate someone died more quickly after fentanyl ingestion. . However, she cautioned that there is no way to tell from the autopsy report alone how much fentanyl Nestande ingested, when it was ingested or why.
She added that there is also nothing in the report to show whether the fentanyl and cocaine were contained in another substance ingested by Nestande. The report did not directly mention any evidence of fentanyl or cocaine found in Nestande’s home.
Fentanyl use is a widespread social problem
While Hetherington said the autopsy report alone does not provide clear answers about the circumstances that led Nestande to ingest the drugs, she said the current fentanyl overdose crisis has been shown to impact many strata of society.
“It’s not just like people living on the streets or a chronic person with a very severe drug addiction,” said Hetherington, who oversees the health system’s Overdose Data to Action program.
Instead, she said overdoses often result from people taking substances whose composition they don’t know, which is a risk whenever someone buys fentanyl from a non-pharmaceutical source. She cited recent research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which found that a third of American adults know someone who has died from a drug overdose, and other research from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which found that 50% of adults admit to having consumed illicit drugs during their lives and 25% said they had consumed them in 2022.
“Everyone knows someone,” she said of the prevalence of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs.
Fentanyl, in particular, is dangerous because of its extreme toxicity, which is part of the reason it has become popular among those who manufacture illegal drugs in the first place, because drug manufacturers need to add less of the substance than comparable drugs to produce the same effects.
DA took aggressive stance on fentanyl
While the sheriff’s office confirmed there is an investigation into Nestande’s death, it declined to provide further details about what specifically they were investigating. Sheriff’s spokesman Sergeant Wenndy Brito-Gonzalez declined to say whether investigators were looking into who supplied Nestande with the drugs.
A spokesman for the county district attorney’s office, John Hall, said the office has not received any cases from law enforcement regarding Nestande’s death. Hestrin, the elected district attorney, has openly advocated the need to “get tough” on people who supply fentanyl and said his office is pursuing murder charges when appropriate.
In November, a jury in Murrieta became the first in the state to find a defendant guilty of murder in such a case. Prosecutors said the defendant, Vicente Romero, shared a pill with a 26-year-old woman, Kelsey King, who died of an overdose.
“This verdict is a testament to our unwavering commitment to protecting our communities, providing justice for victims, and holding accountable those who engage in the distribution of illicit fentanyl resulting in death,” Hestrin said at the time.
‘Like a brother’
Meanwhile, those who knew Nestande continue to remember him as they struggle with his loss.
Hernandez told The Desert Sun that he was “like a brother” and “a great man,” whose impact on him and the community lives on.
Among Nestande’s many roles in politics was working as chief of staff for then-U.S. Representative Mary Bono from 1998 to 2000. Nestande previously managed the campaign of Sonny Bono, who was married to Mary until his death in a skiing accident in 1998. She succeeded him in representing a district that included the Coachella Valley in Congress.
Mary Bono said Friday that former employees who worked for her and Sonny would gather in D.C. over the weekend for a reunion and celebration of Nestande.
Desert Sun staff writer Tom Coulter contributed to this report.
Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development and business in the Coachella Valley. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and email paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared in the Palm Springs Desert Sun: Sheriff investigates fentanyl overdose in former California lawmaker
