Friends and family of Aiden Vining got a chance to speak for him, and about him, at Monday’s sentencing for Cesar Alexander Lopez, 26, of Hyattsville, Maryland.
Last November, Lopez pleaded guilty to Involuntary Manslaughter for selling counterfeit Percocet found to be laced with deadly amounts of fentanyl. Aiden Vining, who was 17, was found unresponsive in his family’s Chevy Chase home in October of 2023.
“This is a grown man who sold drugs to my underage child,” said Alexis Vining, Aiden Vining’s mother.
She said she can’t stop thinking how Lopez’s sentence — five years in prison and five on probation — is much less than the ones likely facing the men charged with first degree murder in the death of a good friend of hers who was killed just a month before she lost her son.
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Blake Bozeman, a former Morgan State basketball star, a local realtor and father, was murdered in September 2023 when he walked into the path of two men as they began firing into a crowded lounge on H Street Northeast in D.C.
“The weapon involved for my son was fentanyl, the weapon involved for Blake was a gun,” Alexis Vining said. “There’s a weapon in each instance, one just happens to be a drug and the other one is a gun, so why is there five years for my son and 20 years for Blake”
Assistant State’s Attorneys Jennifer Harrison and Kimberly Cissel with the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Overdose Prosecution Unit worked to secure Lopez’s Conviction.
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State’s Attorney John McCarthy says he understands Alexis Vining’s concerns and has thought about them himself.
“I’m also hoping that somebody in the legislature will listen to us and understand that distribution of fentanyl resulting in death should be its own crime.”
One friend who spoke on behalf of Aiden Vining says his loss, this tragedy, has inspired her to pursue studies to become a doctor.
