A Harper Woods woman is to be sentenced in February after pleading guilty in federal court after she was accused of distributing drugs to three Grosse Pointe Woods residents who fatally overdosed in 2023.
Aerian Porter-Craig pleaded guilty Friday, Aug. 22, to two counts of distribution of fentanyl and cocaine in U.S. District Court in Detroit, according to a plea agreement. Sentencing is set for Feb. 25.
She could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, according to the agreement. It indicates that the parties agree that a sentence no lower than 16 years is the appropriate disposition of the case.
“Aerian has accepted responsibility for her actions and was close friends with the victims in this case. She has a great deal of remorse and compassion for the families involved,” Porter-Craig’s attorney, Steven Haney, Sr., indicated in an email to the Free Press on Aug. 22.
If the court accepts the plea agreement and imposes sentence consistent with its terms, federal prosecutors will move to dismiss any remaining charges, specifically, those of distribution of fentanyl and cocaine resulting in death.
Porter-Craig, then 32, was arrested in September 2024 after a criminal complaint was filed against her in federal court. The residents who died from drug overdoses on the same day thought they were buying cocaine, but federal officials said the drugs they received were laced with fentanyl.
More: Feds: ER nurse from Grosse Pointe Park, who tampered with fentanyl vials, pleads guilty
According to the plea agreement, on or about June 9, 2023, Porter-Craig, through phone calls and text messages, knowingly agreed to sell a controlled substance to several adults. She delivered a controlled substance to a Grosse Pointe Woods man at his home the evening of June 9, 2023. He had intended to buy cocaine, according to the filing.
It indicated that shortly after the delivery, he and a woman ingested the controlled substances that Porter-Craig delivered, and both died within minutes. A medical examiner determined their causes of death were fentanyl toxicity.
Porter-Craig also delivered a controlled substance to another woman at her Grosse Pointe Woods house. The woman also intended to buy cocaine, according to the plea agreement. Shortly after the delivery, it indicated, the woman ingested the controlled substance that Porter-Craig delivered and died within minutes. A medical examiner determined that she died of fentanyl and xylazine toxicity.
“But for the ingestion of the controlled substance the defendant distributed, Victim 1, Victim 2, and Victim 3 would not have died,” according to the plea agreement.
It indicated there was some remaining controlled substance that Porter-Craig delivered at the homes of victims 1 and 3, with a lab analysis showing it contained a detectable amount of cocaine and fentanyl. Court documents did not identify the victims by name or age.
Grosse Pointe Woods public safety officers found two victims, a man and a woman, dead in the 1000 block of Canterbury on June 10, 2023, according to the original complaint filed in court. Then, they found another woman dead in the 1400 block of Edmundton, about a half-mile away.
Autopsies by the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office determined the man and the woman on Canterbury died from fentanyl toxicity, per the complaint, and the other woman died from fentanyl and xylazine toxicity.
Xylazine is a non-opioid animal tranquilizer that is not safe for human consumption and is most often mixed with fentanyl by drug traffickers. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Detroit office issued warnings about xylazine in April 2023, just two months before the three Grosse Pointe Woods residents died.
Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @challreporter.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Woman pleads to selling drugs after 3 Grosse Pointe Woods residents OD