3 Dead In Tangled Overdose Web Connecting 2 Montco Prison Inmates

EAGLEVILLE, PA — When Ronald Brauning and Antonio Rivera met in Montgomery County Correctional Facility in October of 2018, they were both there for the same reason: they'd been charged with selling a fatal dose of opioids.

Brauning had been there for months. He was awaiting trial in his case. Over a year before, in August of 2017, police said he sold numerous drugs to a Hatfield father and husband, 41-year-old Ronald Solomon.

Solomon had just returned from a camping trip with his family. Hours after making the purchase of heroin and fentanyl from Brauning, the District Attorney's Office said, he was dead. Brauning pleaded not guilty.

Rivera, on the other hand, had only been in prison for a matter of minutes. Just a few weeks before, on Sept. 25, 2018, a woman whom police said he had been selling drugs to for some time died of an overdose. Danielle Petersen, 29, was a graduate of St. Joseph's University.

Detectives used Petersen's phone to set up a controlled buy with the man known as "Tone," who arrived at the appointed location with more drugs, ready to sell again.

Rivera was booked in Montgomery County Correctional Facility on Saturday evening, October 6, at around 6:50 p.m., records show. He was put in the same cell block of Brauning.

By 6:51 p.m., video surveillance captured Brauning speaking to Rivera.

Later, in the course of a grand jury investigation, inmates would tell detectives that the cell block where the pair were incarcerated had been drug free for at least eight months before Rivera's arrival. But that all changed overnight.

Rivera did not elaborate how he had brought the drugs behind bars. He would later tell another inmate that he had "just tucked them," according to the criminal complaint.

Rivera provided Brauning with drugs to sell, the complaint states, but Brauning was not just a dealer. For the last four days of his life, Brauning was "high every day," making multiple purchases of fentanyl from Rivera for his own use.

At around 12:45 p.m. on Oct. 9, Brauning was found unresponsive in his cell. He was soon declared dead. Rolled up cellophane containing a white substance that was later proven to be fentanyl was found next to him in his cell.

When the dust settled, multiple other prisoners were put in administrative segregation after testing positive for fentanyl. Another charge of drug delivery resulting in death was tagged onto Rivera's docket. He was just one of six suspects charged in Montgomery County a series of recent overdose deaths.

It remains unclear how Rivera brought the drugs into prison.