Ex-Sacramento deputy, accused in son’s fatal stabbing, overdosed on-duty in 2023
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- Marvin Morales, a then sheriff’s deputy, was found in 2023 overdosing on fentanyl.
- He resigned from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office in 2024 after an investigation.
- Morales told investigators he used the confiscated drugs while on duty.
A man accused of fatally stabbing his 11-year-old son Tuesday at their Elk Grove home was a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy who resigned last year from his law enforcement job after he overdosed on confiscated fentanyl while on duty.
Marvin Morales, the former deputy, stabbed his son Tuesday morning before fleeing his family’s Ferrell Way home in Elk Grove, according to authorities. The 11-year-old, identified by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office as Mar Aris Untalan Morales, later died at a nearby hospital.
The Elk Grove Police Department said a 6-year-old child also at the home was not harmed.
Morales reportedly led law enforcement officials in a high-speed chase later in the morning, before his vehicle crashed along Interstate 5 in San Joaquin County where deputies shot him during a confrontation.
He was wounded in the shooting and taken to a hospital where he later died, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Morales, who had worked as a patrol deputy, resigned Feb. 2, 2024. He submitted his resignation about a month after the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office informed him that internal affairs investigators recommended that he be fired on grounds of dishonesty.
Those details were included in a 468-page internal investigation report previously released by the Sheriff’s Office.
Morales got the drugs, later determined to contain fentanyl, when he stopped a man Oct. 24, 2023, at a Shell gas station on Stockton Boulevard, the report said. The man told Morales he had been smoking methamphetamine. The deputy had interacted with the man before, and he knew the man used drugs, Morales told investigators.
Morales said the drugs appeared “dirty,” so he believed they could be mixed with fentanyl, according to the report. He also admitted he took the drugs from the man and smoked them in a bathroom later that day at the sheriff’s Central Division station on 65th Street and Florin Road.
Other deputies found Morales overdosing in the bathroom and administered naloxone in an effort to reverse the overdose. Morales survived after he was taken to a hospital.
Fentanyl is a powerful and potentially addictive drug that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin. The California Department of Justice has said 2 milligrams of the synthetic opioid can result in overdose and potentially death.
Morales told investigators he ingested the drug because he wanted to die by suicide and struggled with his mental health, according to the report.
Morales told investigators that he confiscated a pipe while on duty and smoked methamphetamine, coating the pipe three or four times in the months leading up to the October 2023 fentanyl overdose. It was for a “hit of energy” while he procrastinated completing reports into his investigations, according to the report.
The internal affairs investigators cast doubt on the truth behind Morales’ claims, saying in the report that a drug test of his hair showed “chronic use” consistent with a person who uses drugs throughout their life.
Morales said his mental health had been deteriorating from trauma he suffered while on the job and serving in the Middle East, according to the report. He would cry before coming to work and isolated himself from family.
California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training records available on its website show that Morales voluntarily surrendered his peace officer certification in March 2024.
The Bee’s Ishani Desai contributed to this story.
This story was originally published December 2, 2025 at 3:11 PM.
