Eight months after two Santa Rosa teenagers died from cocaine investigators say was laced with fentanyl, prosecutors have filed murder charges against a 22-year-old man accused of supplying the deadly drugs.
Ramon Nunez Galvan was charged Monday in the deaths of Logan Camp, 18, and Gia Walsh, 16, who were found dead Feb. 22 inside a home on Brookwood Avenue. Their deaths came hours after two other girls, ages 14 and 16, were hospitalized after overdosing on drugs that Nunez is also accused of providing.
Nunez was arrested the next day and charged in connection with the hospitalized girls, while officials continued investigating his role in the teens’ deaths. He made his first court appearance Tuesday in the murder case and is due back Nov. 4 to enter a plea.
Gia Walsh’s grandmother, Ellen Walsh of Santa Rosa, said the charges had been a long time coming and praised prosecutors for pushing the case forward.
“I think it’s brave and I’m glad that they’re doing it,” Walsh told The Press Democrat on Wednesday. “I’m just glad they still pursued (charges).”
A criminal complaint filed by the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office charges Nunez with two counts of murder and four other counts related to possessing and selling narcotics. He was already facing two felony counts of providing drugs to a minor in the earlier overdose case. A preliminary hearing in that case, originally set for Friday, is being rescheduled.
Nunez is being held without bail at the Sonoma County jail. His attorney with the Sonoma County Public Defender’s Office declined to comment Wednesday.
Camp was a senior at Montgomery High School, and Walsh was a junior at Santa Rosa High. Authorities have not released the names or schools of the surviving girls because they are minors.
Investigators said they found evidence of drug use at the Brookwood Avenue home, along with information identifying Nunez as the suspected dealer. He was arrested later that day on Santa Rosa Avenue.
Families across the district were notified about the incidents the evening of Feb. 23, when Santa Rosa City Schools sent an alert through ParentSquare. Camp and Walsh’s classmates soon created makeshift memorials at their campuses.
Ellen Walsh said life has been “much worse” without her granddaughter, whom she described as “a great kid.”
The district’s message initially referenced four student deaths, before police clarified two were unrelated. One was a medical emergency, and the other involved the death of Peter Kachigan, 19, a former Maria Carrillo High School student who was found dead at his home Feb. 20.
Kachigan had taken what he believed was oxycodone. The pills were counterfeit and contained fentanyl — a narcotic officials say is linked to most of Sonoma County’s overdose deaths. The county Department of Health Services reported that of 135 fatal overdoses in 2023, 76% involved opioids, and 90% of those were tied to fentanyl. The synthetic opioid has increasingly been found in counterfeit pills and street drugs, officials said, making casual experimentation especially deadly for teens.
Police said Nunez also supplied drugs to at least one other teen who did not overdose, though that incident occurred on a different day and details have not been publicly released.