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A man raped a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology after giving her fentanyl that left her unconscious and ultimately killed her, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The student’s friend also took the drug and nearly died.
Moises Freire, 19, of the Bronx, was charged with participating in a fentanyl distribution conspiracy and distributing a deadly drug with intent to commit rape. Brian Peralta Cabrera, 18, of Queens, was also charged in the drug conspiracy.
According to prosecutors, Freire brought fentanyl to the students’ dorm room on March 18 and falsely claimed that the substance, which he’d previously described as “straight poison,” was pure cocaine. At his urging, the women took the drug and almost immediately lost consciousness, prosecutors said. Freire was not a student at FIT. The woman he is accused of raping lapsed into a coma and died March 21.
Freire and Peralta Cabrera were first arrested in March and pleaded not guilty to an initial set of charges that did not include the rape allegation. They remain in federal custody and have yet to be arraigned on the new indictment.
A third defendant, Harry Rosales Pino, pleaded guilty in September to a charge of conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death and serious bodily injury. He is set to be sentenced in December.
Emails seeking comment were left for lawyers for Freire and Peralta Cabrera. If convicted, they face a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison and a possible life sentence.
Neither of the women were identified in court papers.
The Fashion Institute of Technology, part of the State University of New York, was not identified, either, but a defense lawyer mentioned it during a prior hearing. School officials didn’t immediately comment.
At a court hearing in April, Freire’s lawyer, Mitchell Schwartz, called the woman’s death a tragedy but said Freire was not trying to ply the students with drugs.
If anything, he told Judge Sidney Stein, what preceded the overdoses — including the woman’s suggestion that Freire wear a wig and “look like a girl” so he could sneak up to her dorm room after she had invited him over — was “a story of teenagers doing what I would call ‘dumb teenager things.’”
“It’s not dumb teenager things to give somebody fentanyl, sir,” Stein replied.
At the same hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ariana Bloom detailed the rape allegations at the heart of the superseding indictment unsealed Thursday.
Bloom told the judge that Freire admitted in a written statement to campus security that he had sex with the woman and realized she was unconscious after.
Freire said he then looked to his left and saw her friend unconscious on the floor “with her eyes rolled back in her head,” according to Bloom.
Freire did not immediately seek help, instead waiting about 45 minutes while he sent photos of the unconscious women to others, prosecutors said.
When he finally went to campus security, he claimed that the women simply drank too much, prosecutors said.
Christopher Roberts, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration New York Task Force Division, said the allegations were “beyond disturbing and include a cruel deception and unimaginable assault.”
“College should be a place where young people can learn, grow, and pursue their dreams, not a place where predators exploit their vulnerability,” Roberts said. “Every student deserves to feel safe, whether walking across campus, sitting in a classroom, or inside their own dorm room.”