33-year-old facing murder charge after giving methadone pill to man who fatally overdosed

A 33-year-old man is facing charges after prosecutors say he gave a methadone pill to someone who fatally overdosed in June.

Christopher Montez Richmond was charged with one count of third-degree murder, online court records show.

According to a criminal complaint, Hopkins police responded to a report of a person needing CPR at Downtown Park on June 2. There, they found a man on a bench receiving chest compressions.

A witness said the victim and the man giving him chest compressions had been approached by a third man, later identified as Richmond, the complaint states.

Richmond and the victim walked together to a different part of the park and then returned. The witness said Richmond told her he’d given the victim methadone. The witness later said she saw the victim slumped over and called 911.

The man who was giving the victim chest compressions told police that he and the victim were approached by someone who said he could get them methadone. When the victim returned he stopped talking and the man said he thought he’d fallen asleep.

The victim was brought to Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced deceased. His cause of death was later determined to be “mixed ethanol, methadone and mitragynine toxicity.”

When the witnesses told Richmond that the victim went to the hospital, he said “I did not force a grown man to take anything, that’s on him,” according to court documents. Richmond also got upset when he was told that the witnesses told police that he gave the victim a pill.

Court documents state that investigators learned that there was an anonymous complaint of someone selling drugs from an apartment and that Richmond was the suspect.

Both witnesses identified Richmond in a lineup as the one who gave the victim the pill.

On July 1, Richmond told police that while he is prescribed methadone, he takes it in a clinic and doesn’t have it for take home use. However, the clinic said it had given him take home doses 19 times since January, including on June 1.

Richmond also claimed he didn’t remember the victim or what he died on June 2.