Man sentenced to prison in pregnant woman’s fatal overdose
A 57-year-old man was sentenced to at least a year in prison on Thursday for selling drugs to a pregnant woman who died of an overdose in December 2021.
Allan Moore was initially charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of 31-year-old Jeanette Fitzsimmons. The Clark County coroner’s office has ruled her death an accident caused by fentanyl and cocaine intoxication.
Police have said Fitzsimmons was six weeks pregnant when she died after being rushed to St. Rose Dominican Hospital’s Siena campus. According to a Metropolitan Police Department arrest report, Moore was the only person in her phone whom she had texted about acquiring “roxy,” a street name for oxycodone.
Moore is one of a handful of people prosecutors have charged with murder in recent years in connection with fatal fentanyl overdoses, although none of the defendants have gone to trial or been convicted of a murder charge.
During a sentencing hearing Thursday, Moore denied giving Fitzsimmons fentanyl, but admitted to giving her cocaine in the past. He said he was not actively selling drugs at the time of Fitzsimmons’ death, but he did obtain drugs for her from other people.
“He knows that there’s some responsibility associated with cocaine,” said defense attorney Gary Guymon.
Moore pleaded guilty in January to felony charges of involuntary manslaughter and sale of a controlled substance, court records show.
During the sentencing hearing Thursday, Moore told the judge that Fitzsimmons occasionally asked him to provide her with drugs. He said that after she died, police found pills he had given her in her room, but that she had not taken any of the pills he provided. He also accused police of targeting him with charges because he has a criminal history.
“This is the first time I’ve been charged with something I did not do,” he said.
Deputy District Attorney Michael Allmon argued Thursday that when Fitzsimmons asked Moore for oxycodone, he instead gave her a “cheaper substitute.”
“The defendant served her a fatal dose of poison that she took unknowingly,” he said.
Fitzsimmons lived with her mother and left behind a 12-year-old daughter when she died, her mother, Rosa Maria Fitzsimmons, told the judge on Thursday. She asked the judge to punish Moore “to the full extent of the law.”
“No one has the right to place people’s lives in danger simply for a profit,” Rosa Maria Fitzsimmons said.
District Judge Tierra Jones chastised Moore on Thursday for being involved in any drug transactions, even after he said he had gotten sober and tried to turn his life around.
“Whether you’re a drug dealer or not, you have no business even being able to locate somebody who can get cocaine or any type of pills for this woman,” she said.
Jones sentenced Moore to between a year and two years, six months in prison.
As Moore was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom on Thursday, he again denied selling Fitzsimmons the fentanyl.
“I’m innocent for that,” Moore cried out as he left the courtroom.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.