The same alleged drug dealer is accused of selling the fentanyl that killed two different babies in two separate incidents three months apart in San Jose, and now he and the first baby’s father are facing murder charges.  

Two babies died from exposure to fentanyl in San Jose during a three-month period in 2023. And one very awful footnote is that the same alleged drug dealer is accused of selling the fentanyl that killed both babies. That man is 33-year-old Phillip Michael Ortega, accused of selling the fentanyl that killed three-month-old Phoenix Castro in May 2023, and also the fentanyl that killed 18-month-old Winter Rayo in August 2023. Ortega was charged with murder for Winter Rayo’s death last year, and today, the Bay Area News Group reports that Ortega will be charged with murder again in the case of Phoenix Castro’s death.

Baby Phoenix Castro’s father, 40-year-old David Anthony Castro, was also just charged with murder. He had previously been jailed and only charged with felony child endangerment, in the case where authorities allege that fentanyl was found “all over” the baby’s pink flowered onesie. But these new murder charges were just filed Friday, based on authorities finally cracking into the alleged dealer Ortega’s phone, showing that he did go to Castro’s apartment to sell drugs the night before the baby died.    

“The senseless deaths of these two little girls broke our hearts yet hardened our determination to hold responsible the people whose recklessness killed them,” Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a Friday statement. “The fact that the same man provided the fatal drugs that took the lives of Baby Phoenix and Baby Winter within a handful of months of each other is beyond shocking.”

There are more “beyond shocking” and frankly very heartbreaking details about Baby Phoenix’s death. Notably, prosecutors say that the father David Anthony Castro did not immediately call 911 upon discovering his baby was dead, and instead waited until a local head shop opened at 10 am so he could buy fake urine for the drug test police would inevitably give him. (He actually passed that drug test, because, you know…) Baby Phoenix’s mother was actually in a residential drug treatment program at the time of the baby's death, but she too overdosed fatally just a few months later.

Both Ortega and Castro are being charged with second-degree murder, an unintentional killing, but one where prosecutors say the two men “knew the dangers of overdose and death due to drugs and fentanyl, especially the dangers to a baby.” If convicted, they both face minimum prison sentences of 15 years to life.

While there are two babies that have been killed by fentanyl in San Jose, parents have also been charged with murder for the deaths of infants and young children in Brentwood and Livermore. Two toddlers in Santa Rosa died from fentanyl exposure, and one of the dealers in those cases pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Additionally, last summer a Fremont mother pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for her 23-month-old son’s fentanyl death.

Related: Baby Reportedly Ingests Fentanyl Found In Grass at Marina Park, Saved With Narcan [SFist]

Image courtesy Edward Morillo