A drone delivered her lethal dose of fentanyl in a church parking lot. Now her dealer is going to prison - BERITAJA

The small drone didn’t request to recreation acold to driblet the narcotics disconnected astatine a Lancaster religion parking lot, wherever waiting hands would cod and administer the narcotics to their respective buyers.

But 1 peculiar driblet was a lethal dose of fentanyl that killed a female successful 2023, according to authorities.

That death, prosecutors said, led to the apprehension of Christopher Patrick Laney, 37, who connected Monday was sentenced to 14 years successful national prison. In September, he pleaded blameworthy to utilizing an unregistered drone to proviso the unfortunate pinch the deadly dose.

According to a 2024 national indictment, Laney, who besides went by the nickname “Crany,” utilized the drone connected respective occasions from December 2022 to January 2023 to carrier fentanyl and different narcotics from his location successful Lancaster to a adjacent religion parking lot.

Prosecutors didn’t sanction the church, but spot records show that Laney lived adjacent respective churches, pinch the closest 1 located 600 feet from his five-bedroom location and the farthest being 1,500 feet, aliases little than half a mile, away.

Federal prosecutors said personification would cod the narcotics from the drone earlier handing them complete to the buyers. At slightest 1 of those group included a woman, whom national authorities identified only arsenic J.K., who died from a fentanyl overdose successful January 2023. Prosecutors said the exchanges were captured by the drone’s camera.

Federal authorities said they searched Laney’s location the pursuing period and recovered methamphetamine, fentanyl and aggregate firearms, including an AR-15-style firearm that lacked a serial number, commonly referred to arsenic a “ghost gun,” arsenic good arsenic 2 9-millimeter semiautomatic ghost-gun pistols.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Center for Air and Marine Drone Exploitation investigated the case.