A Hyattsville man who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the 2023 overdose death of a Chevy Chase teen to whom he sold pills will serve five years in prison, according to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Cesar Alexander Lopez, 26, of Hyattsville, was sentenced Monday in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville to 10 years in prison with all suspended but five years, the state’s attorney’s office said Tuesday in a statement. He was also sentenced to five years of supervised probation upon his release.
Attorney information for Lopez was not available via digital court records Tuesday afternoon.
In November, Lopez pleaded guilty to an involuntary manslaughter charge in the death of 17-year-old Aiden Vining. He faced up to 10 years in prison.
According to the state’s attorney’s office, on the morning of Oct. 24, 2023, a family member found Vining unresponsive in his bedroom upon trying to wake him for school. Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service crews who were called to the home attempted lifesaving measures, but Vining was pronounced dead at the scene.
Responding county police officers found a “straw with white residue … and a round blue pill labelled ‘M 30’ in Vining’s wallet” at the scene,” the state’s attorney’s office said. Those types of pills are often referred to as “Percocet, percs, erks or 30s on the street,” the statement said.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore ruled that Vining had died of cocaine and fentanyl intoxication.
Lopez was arrested after a county police investigation found phone messages between Lopez and Vining on Oct. 23, 2023, that indicated Lopez arranged to sell the teen 10 “percs,” according to the statement. The investigation also revealed that Vining had bought cocaine from Lopez three days prior to his death.
Following Lopez’s guilty plea, State’s Attorney John McCarthy said in a statement the county needed to “continue to work on educating our youth, in particular, about the dangers of street-level drugs.” The federal Drug Enforcement Agency “tells us seven out of every 10 pills seized contain a lethal dose of fentanyl,” he said.
In October, county health officials reported that drug overdose deaths were down but that fentanyl remained a leading cause of overdoses.
From January through September 2024, there were 57 overdose deaths in the county, according to data presented by local health officials to the County Council in October. Thirty-five of those deaths were related to fentanyl. All the overdose deaths were of men, and none involved anyone under the age of 25.
