A King County Superior Court judge sentenced a 40-year-old man to seven years in prison for a controlled substance charge conviction, reduced from a controlled substance homicide charge after he accepted a plea deal from county prosecutors.<\/p>\n
Kelly Dean Krstich pleaded guilty April 26 to charges in multiple cases including violation of the uniform controlled substances act. Seattle Police arrested Krstich in 2018 in Kent.<\/p>\n
Judge Veronica Galván served as the judicial officer for Krstich’s sentencing hearing on May 5. Krstich’s term of confinement began immediately, with credit for time served in custody from a Sept. 7, 2022 booking, in the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent when bail was set at $499,000.<\/p>\n
Seattle Police initially arrested Krstich in Kent on Dec. 4, 2018 on a homicide charge after a 33-year-old Seattle man died from an overdose on Feb. 24, 2018 after exchanging his prescribed Xanax for fentanyl with Krstich.<\/p>\n
According to the Washington State Legislature, a “person who unlawfully delivers a controlled substance … (which) is subsequently used by the person to whom it was delivered, resulting in the death of the user, is guilty of controlled substances homicide.”<\/p>\n
Screenshots of text messages exchanged between Krstich and the 33-year-old man demonstrated the two exchanging Xanax for fentanyl, according to an affidavit of probable cause.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors filed a felony charge of controlled substance homicide against Krstich on Dec. 9, 2019.<\/p>\n
Krstich pleaded not guilty to the charge at his arraignment hearing on May 14, 2020.<\/p>\n
Prior to facing a jury trial, Krstich accepted a plea deal reducing the severity of the charge to a violation of the uniform controlled substances act for the delivery of fentanyl.<\/p>\n
The prosecuting attorney recommended a seven-year sentence for the charge at Krstich’s sentencing hearing as part of his plea deal.<\/p>\n
As part of his plea deal, Krstich also pleaded guilty to charges from two separate cases.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to charges of residential burglary and second-degree assault in regards to a May 2018 case; and guilty to charges of third-degree assault, attempting to elude police vehicle, and possession of a stolen vehicle in regards to a May 2020 case.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors also reduced the severity of charges from the May 2018 and May 2020 case as part of the plea agreement.<\/p>\n
According to his plea agreement, prosecutors recommended Krstich serve the seven-year sentence concurrently with the sentences of the May 2018 and May 2020 cases, resulting in a total sentence of seven years in prison for all three cases.<\/p>\n
Krstich will also serve a one year parole sentence following his time in confinement, as per court order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seattle Police arrested the man in Kent in 2018 after Seattle man died from a drug overdose <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1153,"featured_media":62767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-62766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62766"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=62766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}