August 23, 2024|
Photo – Mugshot of accused Marty Laroy Ervine – Courtesy CCSO
The Washington-state man accused of supplying a fatal dose of Fentanyl to a Hanna resident plead not guilty in court this week.
On Wednesday morning, 35-year-old Marty Laroy Ervine, of Kitsap County, Washington entered a not guilty plea in Carbon County District Court. Ervine is charged with three felonies; two counts of Delivery of a Controlled Substance, specifically fentanyl, and one count of Manslaughter.
Ervine is accused of sending fentanyl through the mail to Christopher Lansing. Lansing was found dead in his Hanna home in February of 2023. A coroner’s report showed that Lansing had nine times the lethal amount of fentanyl in his bloodstream.
The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation found text messages on Lansing’s phone between the dead man and someone known as Marty. The messages discussed having Marty send small amounts of fentanyl through the mail to Lansing and ways to disguise where the shipments originated. Lansing was in the process of sending a text message to Marty when he died.
Wyoming DCI tracked the text messages to Marty Laroy Ervine in Kitsap County, Washington. On March 3rd, 2023, Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies in Washington State found Ervine passed out in the front seat of a truck registered to Lansing. Ervine allegedly told the deputy that Lansing sold the truck to him before moving to Wyoming. Text messages between the two men revealed that Lansing appears to have given the vehicle to Ervine in exchange for drugs.
A search of the truck yielded 75 counterfeit fentanyl tablets, over 35 grams of Methamphetamine, burglary tools, and stolen IDs and debit cards. Small baggies with alien faces on them were also found during the search.
Roughly ten days before Lansing’s death in 2023, a similar baggie was found at the scene of the fentanyl overdose deaths of Saratoga residents Cassidee Wingo and Richard Heap. An employee of Saratoga Sandwich Company was charged, and later acquitted, of two counts of involuntary manslaughter related to the two deaths.
Ervine was arrested by the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office in 2023 and charged with theft, delivery of a controlled substance, possession of another’s identification, and possession of motor vehicle theft tools.
Last month, the suspect was extradited to Carbon County to face charges related to the death of the Hanna man. On Wednesday morning, Ervine was arraigned in Carbon County District Court where he pled not guilty to all charges.
A jury trial will be scheduled within six months. Ervine is currently being held in the Carbon County Jail on $100,000 cash bond.
