Fugitive found, charged with causing fentanyl death

Arapahoe County prosecutors have charged a man wanted by Arkansas authorities with dealing fentanyl in Colorado, which they say led to the death of an Englewood man in May of 2023.
Court and arrest records show Raffiel Walker, 36, is being held for distributing fentanyl causing a death, criminally negligent homicide and distribution of fentanyl. He is being held on a $250,000 bond in the Denver Jail.
In an affidavit prepared by an investigator for the 18th Judicial District Attorney, the case is laid out that Walker sold fentanyl in April of 2023 to Calvin Grace, who overdosed on the drugs days later. The affidavit says Walker had about three times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system when he died at his Englewood home.
 After learning of the arrest, Grace’s mother, Tricia Otto, said, “This will not bring my son back. There are no winners in this case.”
She went on to say, “The only winners are the people outside this case whose lives are saved and the families who are spared the torment of losing a loved one to fentanyl poisoning.”
At the time that investigators say Walker was dealing fentanyl to Grace in 2023, a CBS News Colorado investigation showed Walker was on the run from charges in the state of Arkansas.
He was wanted for allegedly violating his probation in Arkansas in a 2017 murder case. He had twice been arrested and jailed in Denver since 2021, and both times, Denver authorities had to release him from custody because authorities in Arkansas refused to have Walker extradited back to their state. As a result, he remained free in Denver to allegedly deal drugs.
Otto called what happened “an absolute failure of our system,” expressing disbelief that Arkansas authorities would not retrieve a man wanted on serious charges.
In the most recent arrest affidavit, the DA’s investigator said Walker was a “street dealer” who trafficked in fentanyl and Xanax. The investigator wrote that it was common knowledge among street dealers that selling pills containing fentanyl “could cause the death of the customer(s) buying them.”