Two men from California and Pennsylvania are headed to federal prison in separate cases involving the overdose deaths of four people in 2019, three at a South Side party and one in a room above a Beaver County bar.
In the first case, U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV on Monday imposed a term of 10 years on Peter Rene Sanchez Montalvo, 28, of Coachella, Calif.
Sanchez Montalvo had pleaded guilty last summer to multiple drug-dealing counts in connection to the overdoses at the South Side City Works apartments on Sept. 22, 2019.
During a party there, he cut into a kilo of white powder with a knife and offered the drugs to partygoers to snort. They did. Three died, and three almost did.
The FBI later arrested Sanchez Montalvo at a house in McKees Rocks.
A party witness had taken a video of Sanchez Montalvo waving money around, bragging about his wealth and handing out the drugs.
His fentanyl killed Rubiel Clemente-Martinez, 32, of Columbus, Ohio; Josue Soberal Serrano, 38, of Missouri; and Joel Pecina, 32, of Coraopolis.
Three others — Freddy Clemente Martinez, Gerardo Gutierrez and Pedro Ruiz — overdosed but didn’t die.
All of them had been at a concert at a Brookline bar with Sanchez Montalvo. After the show, they all went to the South Side apartment to party and take drugs.
In a second case on Monday, Judge Stickman sent a Freedom man to prison for eight years for supplying the fentanyl and heroin that killed a man in a room above a bar in January 2019.
Zachary Cymbalak, 36, had pleaded guilty last year to supplying the drugs to a man identified only as K.B. under a deal with the U.S. attorney’s office in which the parties agreed to the eight-year term.
He’d been indicted in 2019.
K.B. overdosed in a room on the second floor of a bar in Harmony on Jan. 6 of that year. Police found empty stamp bags and needles next to the body.
Cymbalak, an admitted heroin addict, had given K.B. the drugs in exchange for letting him stay in the room. He called 911 to report the overdose.
Police later used an informant to make a controlled buy from him and found that he sold the same drugs to the informant that he’d sold to K.B.
When police pulled him over after that buy, he lied by saying Cymbalak had stolen the drugs from him and used them on his own.
He later admitted that he gave K.B. stamp bags.
Cymbalak’s lawyer, Sarah Levin, said he had once owned his own lawn care company, taking care of 28 lawns, but had fallen prey to addiction. He had also said that he should have been the one to die instead of K.B.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan Conway said the eight-year term is appropriate. Cymbalak has only a minor criminal record and no history of violence.
“There is no evidence that the defendant intentionally tried to kill the decedent,” Conway said.
Cymbalak will be on probation for three years after his prison term.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
