Ventura County – A full eight months after she died, 33-year old Thousand Oaks resident Christina Blankenship’s uncle has been arrested and charged with having caused her death.
According to the May 27th report filed by Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Public Information officer Sgt. Victor Fazio, it was on October 28, 2014 that Ventura County Sheriff’s deputies assigned to the Moorpark station responded to a 911 Emergency call reporting “a person not breathing.” When deputies arrived at the scene, they quickly determined that Christina Blankenship was not breathing because she had, in fact, expired.
The investigation that immediately followed led deputies to suspect that Paul Giannotta, Ms. Blankenship’s 64-year old uncle, had supplied her with methadone. With Giannotta thus identified, search warrants were obtained and served upon both the Blankenship residence and that of Giannotta by the Ventura County Interagency Pharmaceutical Crimes Unit, the East County Narcotics Street Team, and the Moorpark Police Department Investigations Unit. The interagency effort revealed evidence at Giannotta’s residence “confirming him as the source of supply of methadone” for his niece.
A subsequent autopsy of Blankenship performed over the ensuing eight months established the “significant contributing factor” and cause of her death as an overdose of methadone. Based upon that finding, Giannotta was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter and furnishing methadone with a special enhancement of causing great bodily injury during the commission of a felony, with his arraignment in Ventura County Superior Court calendared for June 25th.
Christina Blankenship had been arrested twice in April of 2014 on charges of possessing drug paraphernalia.
