A man who dealt drugs from his Bronx apartment, feet from where his children slept, sold them to a customer from Connecticut who died of an overdose within hours, U.S. prosecutors said.
The defendant, Estherlyn Frias, 34, stashed drugs — including methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and methadone — in the apartment where he lived with his girlfriend and two children, according to prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
On July 1, according to an indictment, Kasey Hernandez, 33, of Greenwich, Conn., met Mr. Frias, who used the aliases “Platinum” and “Silver,” outside the apartment to buy drugs. Mr. Hernandez died 12 hours after consuming fentanyl and cocaine. According to prosecutors, the defendant sold drugs to Mr. Hernandez for weeks leading up to his death.
Mr. Frias faces charges of conspiring to distribute narcotics resulting in death, possession with intent to distribute narcotics, and possession with intent to distribute narcotics resulting in death. He could face a sentence of up to life in prison.
During their investigation, the authorities obtained text messages from the victim’s phone where Mr. Frias was identified as “Platinum” in Mr. Hernandez’s contacts. Mr. Frias sent a list of drugs for sale from “soft (heroin), “hard” (cocaine), “down” (fentanyl) and “everything,” prosecutors said.
After Mr. Hernandez died, law enforcement authorities searched Mr. Frias’s apartment and found 1,413 white glassine envelopes with fentanyl, 603 purple glassine envelopes containing fentanyl, 585 pink glassine envelopes with para-fluorofentanyl, 777 colored capsules containing crack cocaine and 20 plastic bottles of methadone. Officials said they also recovered drug paraphernalia, a digital scale and a ledger with notes of drug deals.
Prosecutors said Mr. Frias had used his apartment as a “stash house” from January 2023 to about July 2025. Videos on his phone show him walking past a bed in which a young child is sleeping to retrieve drugs, prosecutors said.
In 2023, a 22-month-old died from fentanyl poisoning at Divino Niño day care in the Bronx, where drugs were hidden under a mat that children slept on. More than 11 kilograms of fentanyl and heroin were found in compartments beneath the floor of the day care center.
The owner of the center and her husband both were convicted and sentenced to decades in prison.
In a news release on Friday, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, Jay Clayton, addressed the deadly drugs that Mr. Frias sold.
“The drugs that he sold claimed someone’s life, and it appears they may have claimed others before,” Mr. Clayton said.
Mr. Hernandez’s brother, Kyle Hernandez, mourned the family’s loss in a GoFundMe page. “My brother battled drug addiction for several years. Deep down, he had a good heart — he was fighting the drugs, not embracing them,” he wrote. Kasey, he said, “was another victim of the poison that is fentanyl.”
Samantha Latson is a Times reporter covering New York City and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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