New York man charged with rape and fatal administration of fentanyl to student | new York

A man raped a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) after giving her a dose of fentanyl that rendered her unconscious and ultimately killed her, federal prosecutors say.

The student’s friend also overdosed and nearly died after taking the powerful synthetic opiate, leading to charges against three men, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement Thursday.

Moises Freire, 19, is charged with participating in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and distributing a deadly drug with the intent to commit rape. Meanwhile, Brian Peralta Cabrera, 18, was also indicted on drug conspiracy charges.

A third defendant in the case, Harry Rosales Pino, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death and serious injury. He was tentatively scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 15 in one of the last major criminal cases in the U.S. justice system involving fentanyl, a leading cause of drug-related deaths in the country, according to the federal government.

Freire was not a student at FIT, but he brought fentanyl into the dorm room of two women he was visiting on March 18. He lied that the substance was pure cocaine, prosecutors allege.

Although he called the fentanyl in question “pure poison,” he successfully lured the women into taking the drug, and both quickly slipped into unconsciousness, prosecutors argued.

Prosecutors said the woman accused of raping Freire fell into a coma and died on March 21.

He, Peralta and Rosales were indicted and pleaded not guilty to the original charges, which omitted the rape allegation.

A transcript of a federal court hearing in April shows a prosecutor alleged Rosales sold the fentanyl at the center of the case to Peralta. Peralta in turn distributed it to Freire, who gave it to the two women at FIT, the prosecutor said.

Rosales entered the plea on September 16. Updated charges against Peralta and Freire, containing allegations of rape against the latter of the men, were filed Thursday.

Neither Freire, described as being from the Bronx, nor Peralta – from Queens – had been arraigned Friday on the charges. They remained in federal custody pending the outcome of the case.

Charging documents against Freire and Peralta do not name any of the women who prosecutors say were drugged. They also do not identify FIT, which is part of the State University of New York (Suny) system. However, the transcript from the April hearing shows that Freire’s lawyer, Mitchell Schwartz, mentioned FIT by name.

Additionally, at that hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ariana Bloom of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan provided harrowing details about the rape allegations against Freire.

Bloom said Freire admitted in writing to raping the woman who later died while she was unconscious. As he told it, he had sex with her, only realized she was unconscious afterward — and then saw his friend on the floor in a similar state “with her eyes rolled back in her head,” Bloom said.

Freire then sent photos to other women as they passed out, waited about 40 minutes and then alerted building security to the situation, Bloom said.

The women were determined to have overdosed – one fatally – after being taken to the hospital.

Bloom said Freire himself never called an ambulance.

“Once things started to deteriorate, instead of calling 911 or alerting someone or putting their lives first, he took the time to take pictures of them and protect himself,” Bloom said.

FIT did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report