The federal trial of a Little Rock man accused of distribution of fentanyl that resulted in the death of a 33-year-old Fayetteville woman got underway Tuesday as prosecutors began presenting their case to a jury.
Jemel Foster, 32, was indicted in March of last year on federal charges of possession of fentanyl with intent to distribute, possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The following July a superseding indictment added one count of distribution of fentanyl resulting in death in connection with the January 2021 drug overdose death of Kaleigh Walser.
In highly charged, emotional testimony Tuesday, jurors heard from Walser's father and his girlfriend, both of whom went to Florida and brought her back to Little Rock after a 30-day jail stint on a misdemeanor charge the day before she died; from her mother; and from her roommate, who testified he made at least 2o trips from Fayetteville to Little Rock to buy fentanyl from Foster.
Jurors also heard from one of the investigators who, on the day Walser died, set up a meeting to buy drugs from Foster by texting him from Walser's phone in a bid to get to Foster before he learned of her death.
During opening statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Givens told jurors that Walser's battles with opioid addiction began after she was badly injured in a car wreck and developed an addiction to opioid painkillers she was given to treat pain. He said once she was taken off of the pills, chronic pain from the wreck and addiction to the opioids led her to seek other ways to treat her addiction, by turning first to heroin and then to fentanyl.
"Those pills," Givens said, "set her on a cycle of addiction she was never able to get off of."
Givens told jurors that in early January 2021, Walser's father, Richard Thompson, and his longtime girlfriend, Virginia Moore, flew to Tampa to pick up his daughter and take her back to Little Rock after she had finished serving a 30-day sentence on a petty theft charge. He said Thompson and Moore took Walser to her mother's home for belated celebrations of Christmas and her birthday, both of which had passed while she was in jail. It was during a layover in Dallas, Givens said, that events were set in motion that culminated in Walser's death less than nine hours later.
"What Rich and Virginia didn't know, and what they wouldn't know until after Kaleigh's death," Givens said, "was that beginning with that layover in Dallas, Kaleigh was trying to beg fentanyl from the defendant."
Givens said, and investigators testified, that evidence from Walser's phone showed she began texting Foster continuously once she landed in Dallas and again when she arrived in Little Rock.
In a brief statement outlining the likely defense he has planned for his client, John Wesley Hall Jr. presented his opening in less than 60 seconds.
"I told you yesterday during voir dire that this is a sad case, and it is," Hall began, saying he didn't intend to contest that his client was a fentanyl dealer or that he possessed firearms while selling drugs. "The issue for you to decide is whether or not his fentanyl killed her, because that's the bottom line."
Thompson testified that he, his daughter and Moore arrived in Dallas from Tampa about 3 p.m. Jan. 11, then flew on to Little Rock, where the three made a stop at a Walgreens pharmacy on Bowman Road and then went to Walser's mother's home.
Thompson described the stop at Walgreens and how he parked facing Bowman Road, facing away from the front door of the store. He said he didn't see his daughter meet with anyone and that after she and Moore emerged from the store, he drove straight to Walser's mother's home, stayed 15 minutes and left, leaving Walser with her mother and her daughter.
"And that's the last time you saw your daughter alive?" Givens asked.
"Yes," Thompson replied.
Moore described Walser's mood as disoriented and upset during a stay at a hotel the night before they left Florida to return to Arkansas. She said the next afternoon in Little Rock, during the Walgreens stop, Walser entered the store ahead of her and exited first due to a line at the pharmacy that held up Moore.
Moore testified she was in close proximity to Walser from the time she was released from jail until the three arrived at the home of Walser's mother, Teresa Coleman, in Little Rock.
Coleman testified about the last night of her daughter's life, her voice breaking. She halted, and occasionally broke down completely, as she struggled to describe the events of Jan. 11 and Jan. 12 of last year. She said Walser's daughter had made a special dinner for her mother in celebration of her return from Florida.
"Victoria made homemade lasagna for her mom," Coleman said. "Then we went to the living room and had Christmas for her."
Coleman said her daughter seemed to be relaxed and happy that night, and that after Walser opened her gifts she went to her daughter's room and then, around midnight, back to the kitchen.
"She was back to my normal Kaleigh," Coleman said. "She was not nervous or jittery or anxious. She was just my old daughter back."
"She told you she wanted to get off of drugs?" Givens asked.
"That's what we talked about in the kitchen that night," Coleman said.
Coleman said she and Walser talked about her future plans and that her daughter was in good spirits. But as a precaution, Coleman said, she kept Walser's car keys and set the house alarm to go off if any door or window in the house opened to make sure that her daughter didn't leave during the night, unaware that Walser had already purchased the drugs that would end her life a few minutes later.
Little Rock police detective Rick Harmon testified that when he was called to Coleman's home the following day, he found Walser lying on the bathroom floor in a fetal position.
Stephen Briggs, a task force officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration, said he went to the home after being contacted by Coleman. After examining Walser's cellphone, he said, he and other officers -- unaware of Foster's identity at that point -- decided to draw him out by impersonating Walser in a series of text messages that lured him back to the Walgreens parking lot the next afternoon on the pretext of selling more fentanyl. As soon as Foster arrived, he was arrested.
"I informed him of Kaleigh's death and immediately his whole demeanor changed," Briggs said. "He looked defeated."
A search of Foster's person and his car turned up 4.5 grams of fentanyl, a loaded .40-caliber pistol, two cellphones and nearly $1,000 in cash.
Testimony resumes this morning at 9:30 with Mary Heffington, a forensic toxicologist, and Stephen Erickson, a medical examiner -- both with the Arkansas State Crime Lab in Little Rock, where Walser's autopsy was performed -- after which the government is expected to rest its case.