California man arrested for fentanyl-related death of Tyler man

DENVER ( KDVR ) — On Friday morning, a big arrest was announced when it comes to fentanyl.

Denver District Attorney Beth McCann and Denver Chief of Police Ron Thomas said they arrested a fentanyl distributor in California who allegedly sold fentanyl to a man from Tyler in Denver who died.

Denver police and the Denver DA’s office said they arrested Jamal Gamal who lives in San Francisco. They are charging him with the distribution of fentanyl resulting in death, which holds a similar prison sentence as homicide. He is expected to be brought back to Denver on Sept. 16 to face charges.

Gamal was allegedly selling drugs online and mailing them to the buyers. Unfortunately, these pills were deadly.

Police and the DA said that between Nov. 9-19, 2023, Gamal sold fentanyl to Collin Walker, 28 of Tyler, and that caused his death. According to Walker’s obituary , he attended All Saints Episcopal School in Tyler and was attending the Metropolitan State University of Denver when he died.

Earlier this year, Denver police conducted a sting operation to catch Gamal and bought fentanyl from him. He mailed detectives 14 grams of fentanyl from California. He was arrested on Aug. 28.

The DA’s office has been making a push to hold drug dealers accountable if someone dies from the drugs they sell, and fentanyl has been a growing issue.

It’s a fairly new charge, “distribution of fentanyl resulting in death” was enacted in Colorado in 2022. So far, this is the sixth time the Denver DA’s office has charged a drug dealer with the crime.

“Collin Walker’s death is yet another tragic example of the devastation that fentanyl continues to cause in our community. The charges against Mr. Gamal should send the message that people who are accused of selling this poison in Denver will be prosecuted by my office to the fullest extent of the law,” said McCann.

How big of a problem is this?

The Common Sense Institute looked into the numbers and said the total cost of fentanyl-related overdose deaths in Colorado was estimated to be $16 billion in 2023. This is over 10 times the cost of fentanyl overdoses from 2017.

The DEA’s Rocky Mountain Field Division seized a record of more than 425 kilograms of fentanyl in 2023. Just two milligrams of pure fentanyl is a deadly dose.

Depending on the purity, the drugs seized from 2023 alone could be enough to kill every Coloradan 36 times or to kill one in every three Coloradans, according to the CSI.

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