The father of two young boys aged just 10 and 8 years old died steps away from his children in a restroom at Dallas Love Field Airport after overdosing on Fentanyl that had been hidden in the boys’ luggage by their mother.
Magdalena Silva Banuelos, 47, has pleaded guilty to distributing the fentanyl that killed her ex-husband on May 31, 2022, and now faces a maximum sentence of 12 years imprisonment.
Prosecutors accused Banuelos of using her sons to “mule drugs” after packing more than a gram of fentanyl in a Clinique makeup container that was then hidden in her son’s luggage.
Banuelos lives in Albuquerque and had arranged for her sons to see their father who lived in the Dallas area. After her sons had boarded the flight to visit their father, Banuelos exchanged text messages with her ex-husband in which she warned him about the risk of overdose from the drugs.
“Hey, you be careful,” Banuelos wrote in one message to her husband as their children were flying to Dallas. “I can barely take one small hit,” Banuelos cautioned. “Seriously, you could OD (overdose)”, the messages continued. “No dying on the kitchen floor”.
Her ex-husband reassured Banuelos that he would take it “very slow and easy” but then said “one puff to take the edge off will be soooo needed”.
“Yeah, but it’s going to f**k you up,” Banuelos replied.
The victim was waiting to collect his sons at the gate on arrival, and they then proceeded to the baggage reclaim hall, where he immediately started to search through their luggage.
The victim then took his sons to a nearby restroom. Just seven minutes later, surveillance video caught one of the sons exiting the restroom looking visibly upset.
Within a few minutes, law enforcement were on scene, and a few minutes later, first responders entered the restroom where they found the victim unconscious.
A post-mortem determined that the victim had died as a result of overdosing on fentanyl and ethanol.
“This case is a double tragedy,” commented U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton on Thursday. “A pair of young boys lost one parent to drugs and the other to the criminal justice system”, Simonton continued.
“This defendant allowed her two young sons to fly more than 500 miles cross-country with a highly lethal synthetic opioid stashed inside their suitcase, knowing full well how dangerous it was.”
These boys stood nearby as their father suffered a fatal overdose after ingesting it.”
Banuelos had told prosecutors that she believed the drug she hid in her children’s luggage was heroin.
I’m really confused by this article.
Is this what happened ? Mother/Father divorced. Father does drugs. Mother packed drugs in her sons suitcase so father could injest them. When the two boys arrived from ABQ, father roots through their bags to find the drugs mother hid there. The drugs were laced with Fentanyl and father dies.
Is that it?