foreign everybody 's not ready all right I'm Pinellas County Sheriff Bob walterian we're here this afternoon to talk about a homicide that happened about a year ago on November 19th of 2021 at about 7 30 in the morning the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office responded to a report of a deceased person in the grassy area along the Duke Energy power easement which runs north off of State Road 580 kind of in that area north of Countryside mall and it would be to the area to the west of Countryside Boulevard detectives identified the deceased person who was found along the Duke Energy power lines that power easement in there as 16 year old Megan Cooper Megan's body appeared to have been dumped in the field and it appeared that she had been there for a couple of hours at the time that she was found Megan lived at 3145 Sandy Ridge Drive in Clearwater and was a freshman at Countryside High School detectives from our Robbery Homicide unit in the medical examiner's office determined that Megan died from a drug overdose the autopsy also revealed that Megan had recently had sexual intercourse but there was no indication of a struggle toxicology tests as a result of the autopsy revealed that Megan died from an overdose of fentanyl unfortunately as we know all too well fentanyl deaths are too common these days and most people I think by now hopefully are aware of how dangerous fentanyl is now fentanyl is a dangerous period end of story end of day it is an absolutely dangerous drug that kills people but one of the greatest challenges and one of the greatest dangers with fentanyl is when people take it without knowing they're actually taking fentanyl because it is so potent and because it is so lethal in very small doses now we see this unfortunately we see this time and time again people who are addicted to drugs like heroin and cocaine which are white powder substances ingesting the drugs only to learn it was fentanyl or a combination of Fentanyl and their drug of choice heroin or cocaine because it's all mixed in and not solely there are less lethal drug like heroin or cocaine so what happens is is that people think they're taking one drug cocaine heroin whatever it is and in some cases we see this we've seen it in the past where you take non-narcotic drugs like Xanax and others but it's got fentanyl mixed into it and people don't know and because all it requires is such a small amount they take it and they're overdosing in some cases dead because of it in this case and think about this what I'm going to tell you here is is that it's astonishing that the toxicology showed that Megan Cooper had 26 nanograms per milliliter of fentanyl in her system according to toxicologists someone is dead dead okay rock hard dead and can't recover once they have seven nanograms of fentanyl per milliliter in their system so that means that Megan had almost four times the amount of fentanyl in her body that was necessary to kill her where there is absolutely no point of return so detectives from our Robert hobbin side unit have been diligently working on this case for the past year to determine who gave Megan Cooper such a deadly amount of Fentanyl and by doing so killed her we knew that there was no way that Megan knowingly took such a deadly amount of Fentanyl unfortunately and sadly Megan used cocaine but there was no indication that she used Fentanyl so this did appear to be one of those cases that I was talking about where someone addicted to One Drug in this case cocaine was given a drug they thought was their drug of choice the cocaine and when they consumed it it killed them because heroin and cocaine are two very different drugs and they have to be used very differently you can use cocaine in Greater amounts than you can Fentanyl and when you take greater amounts of fentanyl you end up with a situation where you're dead So based upon this year-long investigation a grand jury this past Friday a couple days ago indicted 25 year old Robert guo his picture is guy here to my right for the first degree murder of 16 year old Megan Cooper go is the one who gave Megan the fentanyl they killed her now guo as you can see from this Photograph and that's a photograph from his time he was I guess booked into the Florida Department of Corrections the state prison system he's currently an inmate incarcerated in the Florida Department of Corrections and he's serve any 40-month prison sentence for Loudon lascivious behavior on a child under 14. he's going to be transported to the Pinellas County Jail where he will face the first degree murder charge for which he was indicted this past Friday now here's what we know happened Google as I said who's in his mid-20s and he lived at 2629 Bruton Court in Clearwater not far from where Megan Cooper lived and you can see we have a map here to your right uh that shows where Megan Cooper's residence uh was where guo's residence was and I'll get to it and explain but where her body was found now Google sexually prayed on young teenage girls who he met online and befriended them by Furnishing them drugs for sex the Hernando County charge and that's the charge for which Google is currently in the Department of Corrections resulted from sex that he had with a 14 year old girl who he met on the dating app Tinder at the time that Megan died Google had been charged in Hernando County case and he was out of jail on bond awaiting trial because he was out on Bond and threw a bail bondsman on the loot and lascivious charge he was wearing a GPS ankle monitor that ankle monitor that he was wearing because he was out of jail on bail from the Hernando County case helped us prove that Google is the one that furnished the fentanyl to Megan Cooper that killed her and that he dumped her body uh by the power lines so further with what we know is on November 18th of 2021 Megan Cooper was last seen Alive by her mom at her home and that was a little after eight o'clock and Megan's mom went to bed and Megan was supposed to be in for the night so Megan's at home with her mom mom goes to bed Megan's 16 years old goes to Countryside High School supposed to be in for the night we also know that earlier that day on the 18th guo this Predator sent Cooper a text message that stated we should and I'm quoting we should hang out tonight let's do Coke and get effed up that's a copy of the text message that's there Cooper replied to Google's text message okay and that they could hang out later that night Megan also spoke with a friend by phone that day and she told a friend that she was going to do cocaine with Bobby who is Google and earlier that same day in addition to sending Megan Cooper the text Google sent in essence the same text to a different young girl a 15 year old girl and he told this 15 year old girl quote we should hang out today let's do Coke and get effed up now this 15 year old girl decided not to meet with Google and at that time rejected his advance so during the day on the 18th of November of last year guo and Cooper texted back and forth several times about how good the cocaine was that they were going to use that night and they discussed having sex as I said guo is a predator who was praying on as many young teenage girls as he could Angola made arrangements to pick Cooper up again after her mom went to bed and he actually did pick her up from her home at about 9 20 p.m on November 18th and we know this from a variety of sources of information not the least of which is that GPS ankle monitor that Google was wearing and again he was wearing that because he's out on bond from the Hernando County gluten lascivious case so after he picked up Cooper Google and Cooper arrived back at Google's house at about 9 30 pm the ankle monitor shows that Google stayed at his house all night and at about 11 32 so they get to Google's house at about excuse me about 9 30 about 11 32 on the 18th Cooper texted a friend and stated quote I just did so much coke and it feels so good so Megan Cooper 16 year old girl is a 25 year old ghoulos house they texted all day about getting quote effed up and using cocaine and having sex mom goes to bed Megan gets picked up by Google goes to his house and then she texts her friend that said she just did so much coke and how good that it feels so five minutes later so this text goes out at 11 32 PM five minutes later at 11 37 pm Cooper and this is again after she had said that she had just used so much coke guo texted that same 15 year old that he had texted earlier in the day that he also wanted to hook up with he texts her and he says I need you it's an emergency we know from the GPS Monitor and other sources of information that Google remained at his house until about six o'clock AM the next morning which would have been on the 19th the GPS monitor shows that at about 6 a.m Google traveled from his home to the power lines exactly where Megan's body was found and then immediately traveled back home so you can see again on the map he went from his home to the power lines dumped her body and went right back home now remember Google texted the other girl at 11 37 the night before and said that she had adjusted the cocaine and that he had an emergency so what it appears is that Google cap Cooper's deceased body in his home all night before taking her to the field at six o'clock in the morning as I said earlier DNA evidence from the autopsy also establishes that guo had sexual intercourse with Megan we interviewed goal early on in the investigation he admitted knowing Megan Cooper but he denied seeing her or communicating with her at all on November 18th or November 19th and in fact he said that he had not talked with her in over a week now the fact that a guy like this a predator who's preying on these young girls is a liar that's not surprising but the next thing I'm going to tell you is only surprising it's appalling and if nothing else hands down shows what a predator and a sick guy this person is so on the 18th Megan dies at Google's house he keeps her body there all night takes her to the power lines the next day and remember this is a guy that gave a 16 year old girl fentanyl that was four times the strength that would kill someone and he in fact killed her he had sex with her somewhere in the middle of all that as I said he kept his body her body at his house all night he dumped the 16 year old in the field and go within hours of dumping her body in the field was back on his phone texting that same 15 year old who he had texted the day before who rebuffed his request to meet the same one he texted that night when Megan died and he said he had an emergency he's texting her again within hours the next morning asking her to meet with him for sex and drugs so when Psalm you had guo he had just killed one teenage girl with the Fentanyl and with ours was again trying to induce this other 15 year old to meet with him so he could give her the same drugs that killed Megan and have sex with her so the grand jury on Friday as I said indicted to go on charges the first degree murder and unlawful sex with a minor Megan Cooper thought that she was using cocaine but as we know the toxic cause toxicology showed that she had absolutely no cocaine in her system whatsoever this is another situation where somebody is thinking they're using one drug it was in fact another drug and it was a very very toxic amount of that drug so to everyone out there number one don't use drugs if you're addicted there are resources out there to help you but I know it's easier said than done to be an addiction addiction is a terrible problem that people have so it's against this backdrop especially to the young people who are easily pre-done by older people don't take drugs from someone like this you have no idea what's in it and in the case of Megan Cooper at this guy's hands it will will literally kill you so this is a sad situation it's a sad case thanks to a lot of hard work by members of our Robbery Homicide unit to Texas over the last year we've been able to hold Google responsible for this bring Justice to Megan and to her family but fentanyl is a bad drug and unfortunately we see this time and time again and I'm very thankful under these circumstances were able to hold him accountable for it so I'll take any questions that you have this past Friday with the grand jury indicted he was already in the Department of Corrections serving 40 months for luden lascivious before sexy had with the 14 year old in Hernando County have you all got a chance to you or you personally are detectives talked with Megan's family and obviously let them know the news and just what are they saying how are they feeling yeah you know detectives have talked to her mom last week and as early as this morning I think that they're relieved that somebody's being held accountable for this and they now know what happened to her I have a question about him so he was previously for that charge out in Hernando he had been arrested for that out on bond with the GPS monitor when did he go back in um I guess to the Florida Department of Corrections because now he's currently certainly yeah so I'll tell my head I don't I don't remember exactly when he went back so that case so again he was out last November uh he was out on bond so that case would have been disposed of in Hernando County uh sometime I believe it's earlier this year that he was sentenced to 40 months in state prison so he came off Bond he surrendered and he went to a state prison where he was serving that 40 months since obviously I hope and expect that he'll never see the light of day again and you'll get convicted of this first degree murder charge and you'll get sentenced the life in prison which he should I mean you can see this I mean this guy's a predator from you know he's walking around with an ankle monitor but he's having sex with a 14 year old girl he's texting these other young teenage girls for sex and for drugs and wanting to party with him and you can see some of the explicit messages back and forth he's a bad guy you see this in the community here in Pinellas County and how often how prevalent it is unfortunately it's extremely prevalent and and some people knowingly use fentanyl they buy fentanyl they like fentanyl they like to use it and of course the question then becomes why well one of the biggest reasons is is that it's cheaper than heroin and it's a cleaner High than heroin so people like it as a drug of choice if you know you know what you're doing with it and you take it in small doses and you take it I'll put this in quotes appropriately because there's nothing appropriate about it then you can take it without killing yourself but the majority of people don't know how to use it and this is why we find people literally every day sitting in uh their bathrooms at home or on the floor in the living room or wherever it is with a needle stuck in their arm dead because they think they're using cocaine or they think they're using heroin or they think they're using something else but it's Fentanyl and you know this is where you see in some of the poly drug labs in Mexico and other places where they're producing these drugs where you've got multiple drugs including Fentanyl and this is where it ends up in in some of the pills like Xanax and it ends up mixed in with some of the other drugs and then people don't know what they have so when that occurs or if somebody gives somebody fentanyl they know it's Fentanyl and the other person uses it like cocaine in fact I tried to blow it up here to show you but it wouldn't come out is that Megan actually took a picture of the line of cocaine that she thought that she was snorting that night but that wasn't a line of cocaine that was a line of deadly fentanyl that four times the amount seven nanograms is gonna like I said according to the toxicologist you're dead Okay Rock dead you ain't coming back you ain't gonna no Narcan nothing else you seven nanograms you're in trouble she had 28 nanograms so it was straight fentanyl not cocaine mixed from fentanyl absolutely and and that is unusual uh usually what we see in these cases is you'll see a mix of drugs but she had absolutely no cocaine in her system Yeah that poor girl is that and then she did it and she got uh you know texted her friend and said oh this cocaine is good well it wasn't cocaine she was taking it was Fentanyl predatory aspect of this case is kind of what your message to parents are at this point with who your kids are talking to yeah you know you talk to your kids you know make sure that they're aware I mean this guy is a sexual predator and and the drugs for him were the meetings to get the sex um and you could see this you know throughout his Communications look at the Hernando County case you can see that what he was doing and these are all young girls so he's 25 years old and all these girls were 14 15 16. they're vulnerable easily influenced and you know unfortunately equally as sad is is that you know they become drug users they're addicts and you know they need help and that's why I say you know what I say to them is is that I understand it's hard I understand what addiction is and the the medical condition that it is and it's very very tough um but there is help out there you need to ask for it there are people there that really care and want to help you out but if you can't get there don't be taking drugs from people that you have no idea what it is because it will kill you and when there's no coming back from that so it's a very dangerous situation when you take drugs from somebody and they're telling you it's one thing but you have no idea do you have reason to believe that he knew what he was offering Megan was not cocaine I I comment on that I I just say and I don't say this to be Flip or it doesn't matter you know and whether he did or not makes no difference the fact is you can see this type of conduct that this guy was engaged in at the end of the day he didn't care and he couldn't care less and I I've seen a lot over the years but you take a guy that takes a 16 year old girl to his house gives her what he says is cocaine gets her high so he can do things to her like he's commenting about on there and she dies he keeps her in his house it's obvious that he had sex with her at some point in there it dumps her in the field and within a short period of time ours he's going back to the other girl trying to get her to give her more of the same drugs and have sex with her too I I don't even know what to say to that other than it's appalling did you meet Megan on Tinder as well well I don't know where exactly is through social media I mean that's where he was meeting all of them that was his you know social media unfortunately where all these young girls are that's his playground and it is his uh recruiting source for getting these kids and he's 25 years old yeah you know unfortunately and you know the young girls you know attracted to the older guy he's got drugs he's it's just a bad situation all the ingredients there were just terrible Sheriff do we know where he's getting the drugs from the fentanyl no no no he wouldn't cooperate with us at all I mean he's a liar from the get-go I mean he's told us he had talked to her in those two days hadn't seen her in weeks he he was totally uncooperative in his home did he live in that home by himself was there any other drugs found in his home so we have again we just put this case together so he's been in prison since we've been able to put the case together so we have not conducted a search or executed a search warrant at the home so we haven't seized any of the drugs he lived at that home with his father until we looked at home question um that is related to another case involving one of your deputies out in Tampa do you believe that that Deputy that pulled over a championship mayor O'Connor acted appropriately and will he Chasity disciplinary action at all I'm sure I just took you that long to get to that question and I hadn't decided whether I was going to answer that question or not but I'll answer you know Deputy Larry Jacoby did absolutely nothing wrong I stand by him 110 percent the person who did wrong was Mary O'Connor it's had its consequences the mayor's act didn't Tamp his handle on that that's their business Larry Jacoby did nothing wrong he did his job and while she asked for a favor he didn't give her a favor he handled that as he would have handled any other like situation any other like traffic stop you know people think that just because you got stopped by the cops that you're going to get a ticket and that is absolutely not the case is is that we stopped a lot of cars all the time and in very few of those cases very few of those situations we give tickets especially when it's something like this from think about this what this is It's a golf cart they're about 100 yards from the entrance to their gated community the only reason why they popped out wasn't because the restaurant they were trying to go to with indicated Community was closed so they went across the street to get some food from a restaurant and they're going back into 100 yards away cares it's not felony no tag on a golf cart it's no tag on a golf cart so the outcome wouldn't have been any different if she had just kept her mouth shut is that unless it was aggravating circumstances or extenuating circumstances is that that's a warning all day long and I hear all the rhetoric I hear the people running their miles and all this is that if she was not a cop and she hadn't asked that she would have got a ticket no she wouldn't not only those circumstances that doesn't mean anything other than what she did is unethical it's wrong it's all of those things and she's paying the consequence for that she shouldn't have said it she shouldn't have done it none of that should have happened but to say that Jeff Deputy Jacoby did anything wrong is absolutely uh untrue and so because I figured you're going to ask these questions so think about this for a second is that in 2020 in the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office we conducted 81 000 862 traffic stops 81 862 traffic stops we issued citations 12 597 times that's not even 20 percent in 2021 86 146 traffic stops citations fifteen thousand 305. this year year to date we've conducted 91 473 traffic stops citation sixteen Thousand Seven sixty six so I don't want to hear that she got the break just because she was the Tampa Police you've had nothing to do with it the outcome would have been the same the absolute majority of the time and only less than 20 percent of all the traffic stops we do that we issue tickets because there's no big deal is that all we're trying to do is educate people we want to get the behavior right we don't want people running around with no tags on golf carts we don't want people running stop signs we don't want but it this is not a big deal and I can tell you with certainty that the outcome wouldn't have been any different now again what she asked for she didn't get the problem is that she asked for it she asked for special treatment she asked for privilege she asked for special consideration and then of course followed up with if you ever need anything you know come on everybody can see what all that is but that's on her part not on Deputy jacobi's part and I stand by him 100 he did nothing wrong so I want to answer all those questions anybody have anything else all right thanks appreciate it