Glen Cove Fentanyl Dealer Guilty in Two OD Deaths

By Rupert Deedes

Devon Thurmond, age 23, of Glen Cove, pled guilty to conspiring to distribute fentanyl from 2021 through 2023.

He also pled guilty to distributing fentanyl in April 2021, causing the overdose death of a 34-year old Glen Cove man who bought the fentanyl from him.

As part of the plea deal, Thurmond admitted that he conspired with another Glen Cove man, Cartier Funderburke, 24, to sell fake oxycodone pills that contained fentanyl, on and around 29 April 2021.

While in jail on unrelated state charges, Thurmond admitted that he arranged for fake oxycodone pills containing fentanyl to be distributed by Melissa Trimarchi, 37, of Glen Cove, leading to the overdose death of a 27-year old man in Locust Valley on 9 January 2023.

Funderburke and Trimarchi previously pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that Thurmond is facing up to 40 years in jail.

Glen Cove police said that phone records tied Thurmond, Funderburke, and Trimarchi to the sale of the deadly pills to the two men.

Thurmond was prosecuted by the US Department of Justice, under the US Attorney Breon Peace of the Eastern District of New York. 

The CDC says that fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, has caused a significant surge in drug-overdose deaths in the United States.

In the last ten years, the synthetic opioid death rate in the United States has increased by more than 1,000 percent, and of those deaths, more than 70 percent involved a prescription or illicit opioid, according to the CDC.

Over 120,000 people will die this year of drug overdoses in America, and 80,000 of that number will involve fentanyl.