The little drone didn’t need to travel far to drop the narcotics off at a Lancaster church parking lot, where waiting hands would collect and distribute the drugs to their respective buyers.
But one particular drop was a lethal dose of fentanyl that killed a woman in 2023, according to authorities.
That death, prosecutors said, led to the arrest of Christopher Patrick Laney, 37, who on Monday was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison. In September, he pleaded guilty to using an unregistered drone to supply the victim with the deadly dose.
According to a 2024 federal indictment, Laney, who also went by the nickname “Crany,” used the drone on several occasions from December 2022 to January 2023 to transport fentanyl and other narcotics from his home in Lancaster to a nearby church parking lot.
Prosecutors didn’t name the church, but property records show that Laney lived near several churches, with the closest one located 600 feet from his five-bedroom home and the farthest being 1,500 feet, or less than half a mile, away.
Federal prosecutors said someone would collect the drugs from the drone before handing them over to the buyers. At least one of those people included a woman, whom federal authorities identified only as J.K., who died from a fentanyl overdose in January 2023. Prosecutors said the exchanges were captured by the drone’s camera.
Federal authorities said they searched Laney’s home the following month and found methamphetamine, fentanyl and multiple firearms, including an AR-15-style rifle that lacked a serial number, commonly referred to as a “ghost gun,” as well as two 9-millimeter semiautomatic ghost-gun pistols.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Center for Air and Marine Drone Exploitation investigated the case.
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