Witnesses told a Clark County grand jury how a popular social media influencer paid $40 for a bag of drugs on the Las Vegas Strip in a decision that cost him his life.
Anunay Sood, 32, was a Dubai-based travel blogger and native of India with nearly 1.8 million followers on YouTube and Instagram when he came to Las Vegas in late October to generate social media content about a series of events in the Las Vegas Valley. Police and prosecutors say after a night of drinking, Sood consumed a small amount of drugs purchased from a stranger on the Strip, thinking it was cocaine.
It wasn’t.
It was fentanyl, police said, and it left Sood dead on a hotel room floor at the Wynn Las Vegas the morning of Nov. 4. A grand jury has since indicted Thamrong Hill, 49, on a charge of second-degree murder, selling or transporting a controlled substance, and possessing a controlled substance with the intent to sell after authorities said he sold the fentanyl that killed Sood.
Sood’s fiancé, Shivani Parihar, testified in front of the grand jury that she, Sood and acquaintance Meher Chahal were out partying the night of Nov. 3 when Sood said he wanted to see if he could find some cocaine. He was not a big drug user, said Parihar.
“He has tried just once I think because he was never into drugs,” Parihar said. “He was more of a party like alcohol person.”
Parihar said Sood asked her and Chahal to walk around to see if they could find someone who would sell them cocaine. The two women came across a man sitting at a slot machine at the Wynn.
“So we asked him if we could score some cocaine from him, if he had any,” Chahal said. “We asked him upfront and he was very quick to answer that I do.”
Sood eventually went to an ATM and got a small amount of cash, which was given to the man in exchange for drugs. Sood, Parihar and Chahal then went upstairs to their hotel rooms.
“It was just very fine, white, looked like sugar honestly when he took it out the bag and I was like that doesn’t look right,” Chahal said. “And he’s like maybe, I don’t know, it might not be the best quality, but I guess it’s what he scored. But I had my doubts.”
Sood snorted some of the drugs with a rolled up $100 bill. He put some of the drugs on his finger and rubbed it inside Parihar’s mouth. Chahal also tried some.
The women said they woke up with Sood on the floor of the hotel room in a desperate state. Parihar said she started splashing water on Sood to try and revive him.
“Still he didn’t wake up,” Parihar said. “And then his lips started turning blue and then I panicked and then Meher called the reception and I call his family.”
The Clark County coroner’s office said Sood died of a combination of fentanyl and ethanol toxicity.
Metropolitan Police Department Detective Bryan Davila said when he investigated the scene, he immediately suspected that a small amount of drugs found in the room was fentanyl — not cocaine.
“What we noticed with fentanyl, it almost kind of looks — it has a drywall kind of texture to it,” Davila said. “So if you’ve ever like scraped drywall off of a building or in your house, it’s got that grayish tone. That’s what this looked like.”
Davila said face recognition technology, an analysis of phone records and data, along with video evidence from the Wynn, led to the arrest of Hill. He is currently being held at the Clark County Detention Center on a $500,000 bail.
Contact Glenn Puit at gpuit@reviewjournal.com.
