The case against a Santa Clarita woman accused of selling the fentanyl that led to the Nov. 6, 2022, death of Jax Markley was continued Monday, according to federal records available online.
Skylar Lynn Mitchell, 24, is being held at the L.A. Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. She was charged with one count of federal statute 21:841(a)(1), (b)(1)(C), which is the distribution of fentanyl resulting in death.
She pleaded not guilty in November and was remanded into federal custody shortly thereafter.
Jax Markley was found deceased at home on Heirloom Place on Nov. 6, 2022, according to investigators’ reports of the death.
Court records indicate Markley previously confessed to investigators that she sold Markley the fentanyl.
The statutory maximum generally is 20 years for Mitchell’s charge. She’s due back in court May 21.
The prosecution is the second local investigation from a Sheriff’s Department Opioid Overdose Response Task Force to bear fruit in the form of a court case.
Facing a possible 40-year sentence, a Tarzana man accused of selling fentanyl that resulted in the deaths of two Santa Clarita teens took a plea deal in federal court, a spokesman for the Department of Justice wrote in a December email.
Dominick Alvarado, 22, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, according to Ciaran McEvoy, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“He faces up to 20 years in federal prison for each count (40 years total), but the prosecution has agreed to seek no more than 12 years in prison at sentencing,” McEvoy wrote. “The court is not bound by this agreement.”
Santa Clarita ended 2022 with more than 30 deaths attributed to the drug, including the deaths of Alyssa Dies, 17, and Cameron Kouleyan, 18.
Kouleyan died July 13, 2022, inside his family’s home in Saugus, and Dies on July 23, 2022, after an overdose at Santa Clarita’s Central Park, according to the coroner’s office, with medical examiners attributing both deaths to fentanyl.
Investigators said both drug purchases could be tracked back to Alvarado.
