Alexandrea Hunter, 31 years old and nearly nine months pregnant with a boy, spent the last hours of Christmas Eve 2023 scoring drugs. She didn’t make it to Christmas Day.
Hunter was found by police lying in the women’s bathroom at a Roeland Park QuikTrip about 10:30 p.m. Still clutched in her right hand was a lighter, a burnt-red straw and a piece of burnt aluminum foil.
Hunter’s cellphone lay near her in the bathroom. That’s where she connected with the dealers on Facebook Messenger who allegedly sold her the drugs that killed her.
Despite the Johnson County medical examiner’s ruling that Hunter’s fentanyl intoxication death was accidental, the Roeland Park couple who sold her the drugs are now facing felony charges in the death of Hunter and her unborn baby.
Nicholas Draven Gregg, 25, and Izabel Reed, 24, have both been charged with first-degree murder, distribution of drugs causing death, and other fentanyl and methamphetamine charges by Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe.
Howe said he’s made what are called “drug-induced homicide” cases a priority in his office.
“In all these cases where the victims voluntarily ingest the drugs, I’m proud of the fact that we’ve been aggressive in fighting fentanyl, more than anyone else in Kansas,” he said.
Drug-induced homicide laws have been around since the 1980s, but they're seeing a resurgence in popularity as some prosecutors use them in an effort to combat the fentanyl crisis. As overdose deaths have risen, the use of punitive laws that go after the dealers are seen as a way to cut the supply of drugs.
Howe’s office didn’t provide any numbers on how many of these cases it charges. A survey of four Midwestern states shows that the region accounts for half of the drug-induced homicide stories in the media since 2011.
But national studies show that such laws are not effective in lowering drug use or arrests, may worsen harm to addicts, and even deter people from calling for emergency medical help because they fear arrest.
“We don't need to mess around with the theory, because we know what the data says, and the data says that this approach is quite dangerous,” said Rebecca Blair, senior policy adviser with Fair and Just Prosecution, a national organization of elected local district attorneys who advocate for progressive policies.
Blair argues that there are plenty of state laws that offer harsh penalties for drug distribution charges, and prosecutors are free to use those. Prosecutors who say they want to cut the drug supply don’t really reach the high-level traffickers who are responsible for the bulk of it, or whether those drugs are contaminated, Blair said. In fact, most prosecutions catch low-level dealers.
“Invariably, the people who wind up being caught up in these prosecutions are the people who are closest to the final point of sale, the last person who had hands on that drug before it went to the person who overdosed,” Blair said, “and those are overwhelmingly either low-level couriers or often even friends or family of the deceased who themselves used drugs.”
What prosecutors should focus on, Blair said, are public health harm reduction approaches like needle exchanges, supervised consumption sites, distribution of fentanyl test strips and partnering with the community on drug treatment options.
In the Johnson County case, Reed and Gregg were already being watched by the Northeast Kansas Drug Task Force in 2023, according to court documents. When Hunter died, detectives sent a confidential informant to the couple’s apartment to buy drugs, eventually leading to the arrest of Reed and Gregg. Detectives ultimately found the communication between Hunter and Reed, just hours before Hunter’s death on Dec. 24, 2023, asking for “points” or about 0.1 grams of fentanyl.
Reed and Gregg are each being held on $1 million bond and face preliminary hearings in the fall.
