2025-12-02
Undercover sting at Amarillo hospital leads to 20-year prison sentence
AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - A Wayside woman will spend 20 years in prison for dealing large amounts of fentanyl from an unlikely place—a hospital room.
Katie Jo Pate, 43, pleaded guilty last month to two felony charges of manufacture or delivery of a controlled substance.
According to court documents, Pate’s first offense happened in September 2022. On that date, she sought medical treatment at an area hospital after she was injured in a shooting.
Pate was admitted and put in a bed. During her treatment, she got out of the bed to use the restroom and an attending nurse saw a bag of blue pills in the bed where Pate had laid.
The documents state that Pate attempted to cover the pills with blankets. A nurse moved the blanket and took the pills into her possession, then told hospital security what had happened.
Pate, 43, will spend 20 years in prison for two separate incidents that led to a charge of manufacture or delivery of a controlled substance(Potter County Sheriff's Office)
Amarillo Police officers came to the hospital and took the pills in their custody.
Lab testing showed that the blue pills were confirmed as fentanyl.
A short time later, Pate went to the Amarillo Police Department to speak with officers about her shooting. While she was there, she asked to talk to officers about the pills they took.
She admitted to officers that the pills were hers and she planned to sell them for $9.00 each.
Police arrested Pate on the charge in December 2023.
She was booked into Potter County Detention Center for the first-degree felony and released after posting $10,000 bond.
In March, an undercover agent investigated a tip that Pate was selling fentanyl.
The agent called Pate and was able to discuss buying a large amount of fentanyl from her. She agreed to sell him 100 pills for $2,000.
Pate told the undercover agent that she was in a hospital room and asked him to come up there for the deal.
She told him that her source of supply would bring her the pills after he gave her the money to pay for it.
The undercover agent—accompanied by another undercover officer—went to the hospital and gave Pate the money as instructed.
As the agent handed her the money and left, his backup unit stayed in the hallway and observed Pate’s source enter the room and then leave.
The source is identified in court documents as 27-year-old Jaqulyn Ann Franco.
Franco, 27, was identified as the supplier of fentanyl for Katie Jo Pate.(Potter County Sheriff's Office)
The undercover agent returned to the hospital room to get the pills he paid for.
The court documents say that before Pate gave the agent the fentanyl, she told him he “needed to touch her breast to prove he was not law enforcement.”
Pate then gave the agent the bag of pills and he left the room.
Amarillo Police officers detained the source, Franco, in the lobby of the hospital. The cash the agent gave Pate to purchase the fentanyl was in Franco’s possession.
Two uniformed narcotics detectives then went to Pate’s room to conduct a non-custodial interview.
Pate denied selling fentanyl on that day but admitted to selling to support her own habit.
She also told the officers she had a pending charge and intended to contact police “to see about providing information in exchange for leniency.”
Franco was arrested at the hospital and booked into Potter County Detention Center on drug charges that day.
A complaint was filed against Pate in late May.
After learning of the new charge against her, Pate failed to appear at a scheduled plea for her 2022 offense.
She forfeited her bond and evaded authorities for several weeks before they located her at a hotel in south Amarillo.
Pate was held without bond until she was taken before Judge Steven Denny in Potter County last month where she pleaded guilty to both first-degree felony charges.
Judge Denny then sentenced her to 20 years in prison.
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