After baby dies from fentanyl poisoning, feds arrest couple they believe sold it to mom

WEST PALM BEACH — A 32-year-old Lantana-area woman could spend the rest of her life in federal prison if convicted of selling the fentanyl that killed a 10-month-old baby almost two years ago.

Samantha Yi and her partner Darnell Mendez, 31, were charged this week with two counts related to fentanyl distribution. Their arrests followed a long-term investigation by the Boynton Beach Police Department, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after the infant's death in 2022.

According to investigators, Yi and Mendez regularly sold fentanyl capsules to a mother and father in their 30s who were raising an infant in Boynton Beach. The mother, Kelly Ann Kirwan, told police that she and her partner, who is not named in court records, often emptied the capsules onto the kitchen counters of their Boynton Beach home and snorted the white powder together.

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On March 31, 2022, and while the child's father was at work, Kirwan said she noticed their daughter begin to make strange noises. Kirwan videotaped the baby and texted the clips to her friends and family, one of whom responded: “This can’t possibly be a normal sleeping sound.”

The mother sent another video to Yi, the woman she called “babe” and “love” and who investigators say commiserated with her about motherhood while dealing drugs in nearby parking lots.

“Have you ever heard anything like this??!?!!??” Kirwan wrote.

According to court records, Kirwan drove with the baby to Yi’s home at about 7 p.m. that day to purchase more drugs, not yet aware of the severity of her daughter’s condition. Shortly before 8 p.m. — about three hours after Kirwan recorded the first video of her baby in respiratory distress — she called 911.

First responders drove the infant to Bethesda Hospital East in Boynton Beach with her mother. Investigators met Kirwan there before driving to her apartment, where they say they found the child’s father in the process of emptying bottles of unidentified liquids and capsules.

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Officers noted several prescription pill bottles throughout the apartment, Benadryl pills on the couch, an empty capsule in the bedroom, another floating in the toilet and two spray bottles overturned in the kitchen sink.

When they returned to the hospital to question the mother, officers said they overheard the father tell Kirwan over the phone not to tell them anything.

Doctors moved the baby, who by then did not have any brain activity or nerve response, to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood. She died soon afterward.

An autopsy conducted by the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office identified fentanyl intoxication as the baby's cause of death. They ruled her death a homicide, prompting Kirwan’s arrest on charges of aggravated manslaughter of a child by culpable negligence.

Her criminal case, filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, remains open. Following her arrest, Kirwan helped DEA investigators identify the dealers she says had a hand in her baby's death. Investigators uncovered months of texts between Yi and Kirwan that chronicled their drug transactions. As part of the investigation, two undercover officers purchased fentanyl from Yi and Mendez for nearly a year.

"They're really strong. Please be careful," Yi told them during one such purchase. "It's dropping people. It's dropping people, so you've got to be careful."

On a Sunday in August, she typed into Google: "What is the charge for killing someone in Florida with overdosing from fentanyl?" Agents arrested her and her partner six months later.

They apprehended them Wednesday at their home in the Lantana Cascade neighborhood off Congress Avenue. During the raid, officers also found 14 firearms which, as previously convicted felons, Yi and Mendez are prohibited from owning.

Detention hearings are scheduled for Yi on March 12 and Mendez on March 14. The arraignment and preliminary hearings are scheduled for March 21.

If convicted of conspiring to distribute fentanyl and distributing fentanyl resulting in death, Yi faces anywhere between 20 years to life in federal prison. Mendez, charged only with conspiring to distribute fentanyl, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Hannah Phillips covers criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism and subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida couple arrested, charged with selling fentanyl that killed baby