A 22-year-old Rockville man was sentenced Monday to one year in prison for involuntary manslaughter after he provided fentanyl to Kevin Ourand, 20, of Rockville, who died of an overdose in 2022, the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office said.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Fogelman sentenced Teymour Peters to 10 years in prison—with all but one year suspended—and five years of probation. Peters served seven months before his trial but is not receiving credit for time served, so his total sentence is 19 months in prison, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.
Peters’ attorney Kush Arora was unable to be reached for comment on Thursday afternoon.
Peters pleaded guilty on June 15 to involuntary manslaughter, according to Maryland’s digital court records.
Ourand’s mother, Jennifer Pierce, a Silver Spring resident, woke up Oct. 12, 2022, and saw the light in her basement still on and found her son dead on the sofa, according to charging documents.
County police officers searched his belongings, finding a Backwoods cigar package filled with six blue pills with “M” imprinted on one side and “30” on the other — these pills resembled Percocet, which is a Schedule II narcotic, the second most dangerous category of drugs, according to charging documents
Ourand’s brother, Matthew Ourand, said that his brother had been repeatedly purchasing drugs from Peters for three or four years since he met him, according to charging documents.
Snapchat messages revealed that on Oct. 11, 2022, Kevin Ourand purchased Percocet from Peters, charging documents said.
Most of the overdoses that Montgomery County Police respond to involve fentanyl that is “dyed, pressed and formed into blue pills that resemble legitimate Percocet pills,” according to charging documents.
Based on this trend, the packaging and the proximity of the pills to Ourand after he died, MoCo Police Detective Jeff Brown said he suspected that Ourand’s Percocet pills were “counterfeit and contained fentanyl,” charging documents said.
Later, one of the pills tested positive for fentanyl, according to the Montgomery County Police’s Controlled Substance Laboratory. And the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that Ourand’s cause of death was fentanyl intoxication, charging documents indicated.
Based on Snapchat messages, it was clear that both Kevin Ourand and Peters suspected that the pills were counterfeit and contained fentanyl, charging documents said.
Fentanyl overdoses have been a concern in Montgomery County, especially for young people, and there have been multiple forums about prevention and treatment hosted this year, including events at Northwood High School and Clarksburg High School.
According to a study conducted by Montgomery County, youth fentanyl overdoses (age 21 and younger) increased 77% in the county over the last two years.
