ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – He had just returned to his northeast Albuquerque home after a work trip to New Orleans was cut short. Dr. Robert Jones got a call from his daughter, Leah, that changed his plans and his family.
Dong-Hyun Jones, better known as DJ, was Leah’s older brother. He had gone upstairs to take a bath and never came out.
“The 911 operator is saying, you know, ‘Can you feel a pulse? Can you do any of that?’ And I’m thinking, I’m 15. I haven’t gone through lifeguard training,” Leah recalled.
DJ died in 2015.
The next day someone knocked on their door.
The man standing outside looked, at first, like he had been living on the streets. His hair was greasy and unkempt. His clothes were worn. Robert Jones didn’t know who he was or why he was there.
Then the man pulled out his badge. He was a DEA agent.
His name was David Howell. He had come to tell the family he was sorry for their loss, and to ask for information that could help investigators hold those who sold their son the heroin accountable.
“He said, you know, this is so important. We have an opportunity to do a lot of good here,” Robert Jones recalled.
More than a decade later, Howell is a whistleblower alleging that DEA agents allowed large fentanyl transactions to go uninterrupted to build bigger cases, even when doing so meant more drugs would reach New Mexico communities.
The allegations have put the agency’s handling of fentanyl investigations under renewed scrutiny. But to understand who Howell is, 4 Investigates spoke with the family whose lives he entered at one of their lowest moments.
For Robert and Leah Jones, their support for Howell is rooted in more than his recent allegations. It began with how he treated them in the aftermath of losing DJ.
“He truly cared, not just about the investigation, but us as a family,” Leah said.
The investigation connected the drug sale to Rosendo Flores Angulo, who was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison.
For Robert Jones, who knew little about the Drug Enforcement Administration before his son’s death, the experience shaped his view of the agency.
“I knew nothing about the DEA. He’s my first presentation. And I thought, wow, this is an organization who’s fantastic,” he said.
That experience is why the family says Howell’s decision to blow the whistle on the DEA did not surprise them.
“He has a very big, strong feeling about society and duties within society and what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said.
The whistleblower allegations concern a different scale of loss: whether agents were instructed to let large fentanyl transactions proceed so investigators could build broader cases, despite the risk that more drugs would reach the public. Two other whistleblowers have since joined Howell, and the allegations are again under investigation.
For Robert Jones, the question is not simply whether allowing a transaction to proceed can help investigators pursue a larger target. It is who bears the consequences while that strategy plays out.
“People I love in this community is going to bear that the only person who had the cajones to say anything was David. That’s integrity.”
He has watched the opioid crisis evolve from over-the-counter opioids when Narcan was hard to get, to today when fentanyl can be seen in broad daylight along Central Avenue and most families know of someone impacted by opioid addiction.
“The system’s overwhelmed with grief and mourning. And, our society is really, really hurting,” Robert Jones said. “We don’t deserve that. New Mexico doesn’t deserve that.”
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