Albuquerque woman sent fatal fentanyl dose to ex-husband in Dallas in children’s luggage
An Albuquerque woman who hid a deadly dose of fentanyl in her children’s luggage for the use of their father, who overdosed and died, pleaded guilty to a federal drug crime Wednesday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Magdalena Silva Banuelos, 47, admitted in plea papers that she provided the fentanyl that killed her sons’ father, the DOJ said. She was indicted in November 2022 and pleaded guilty to distribution of fentanyl in exchange for a 12-year sentence in a federal prison.
Banuelos put her sons, an 8-year-old and 10-year-old, on a flight from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Dallas to visit their father on May 31, 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. When her ex-husband picked them up at Dallas Love Field Airport, surveillance video shows him rifling through the children’s luggage. Around 10:26 p.m., he went into the airport restroom.
A few minutes later, the man died of an overdose in a restroom stall, steps away from his sons, the DOJ said in the news release. The boys left the restroom, distraught, around 10:33 p.m.
Investigators found in the stall a Clinique brand makeup container storing more than a gram of fentanyl, the Justice Department said. In plea papers, Banuelos admitted she packed the fentanyl for her ex-husband to use.
Text messages included in the news release showed Banuelos knew the risks of her ex-husband taking fentanyl.
“Hey you need to be careful,” she wrote a few hours before he died.
He answered that he understood.
“Yes ma’am. Very slow and easy,” he replied.
Banuelos told him to just take one dose, which he said he would.
“No passing out on the kitchen floor,” she responded. “Seriously you could od. No dying on the kitchen floor… It’s going to (expletive) you up!!!”
Authorities said at a detention hearing in January 2023 that Banuelos “used her minor children to mule drugs.”
U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton said in the release that the case is a “double tragedy” because the two boys lost their dad when he died of an overdose and lost their mother because she used the children to deliver the deadly fentanyl to their father.