Two people arrested in the sale of a deadly batch of fentanyl that police said killed nine people in the District knew the drugs were lethal and sold them in a discount “flash sale,” a federal prosecutor said.

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       Assistant U.S. Attorney David T. Henek said word of that sale quickly spread through a neighborhood near Nationals Park the morning of Jan. 28, drawing customers to a gray Mazda parked at a street corner, thinking they were getting a deal on cocaine.

       U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui ordered the defendants — a 43-year-old Sheldon Marbley and 23-year-old Shameka Hayes — detained, calling their alleged actions a danger to the community.

       “Unfortunately, in my time on the bench, I have not seen a more serious case than this,” Faruqui said at the joint detention hearing held Monday. He said evidence “paints the picture of a massive carnage that occurred in our community.”

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       The judge added that evidence also indicates the two people arrested had a “bad batch and they had to get rid of it.”

       Those comments and others by Henek in court this week add chilling details to the deadly events on Jan. 28 at Half and O streets near the Southwest Washington waterfront, when police said more than a dozen people snorted cocaine laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more powerful than morphine.

       D.C. police arrest two people in sale of fentanyl that led to nine deaths

       Henek said authorities have video of people buying what police say were drugs from Marbley and Hayes, who were in the Mazda. He said one woman in her 70s drove to the rendezvous point in a motorized cart and later died. Another person was found dead in a nearby shed.

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       “A lot of these people barely got around the block before they suffered an overdose,” Henek said.

       Police on Friday said they arrested Marbley and Hayes, both of Northwest Washington, each indicted on three counts of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and cocaine. Two of those counts include distribution of drugs resulting in substantial bodily injury.

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       In court on Monday, their attorneys each argued for their client’s release, noting family members willing to take them in while court proceeding move forward, and a lack of substantial criminal histories.

       Ubong E. Akpan, with the Federal Public Defender’s office, said Marbley is innocent of all charges. She questioned the strength of the evidence and called into question accounts by witnesses who authorities said identified her client as selling drugs linked to at least seven of the overdoes.

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       She noted prosecutors described two witnesses as having “indicated” they purchased drugs from the defendants. “That would raise questions about whether [they] purchase drugs from other individuals around that time,” Akpan said.

       Hayes’s attorney, Dwight E. Crawley, described the evidence presented by prosecutors as “very damning” but argued his client would not flee pending trial, and presents no danger to the community. He noted Hayes is not accused of obtaining the fentanyl she is charged with selling.

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       But Faruqui noted police have not located the supply of drugs from which the sales took place, raising the possibility of additional people overdosing if more sales are made from the tainted cocaine.

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       In all, authorities said 14 people overdosed from drugs purchased on Jan. 28 at Half and O streets. Nine of them died, ranging age from 43 to 74. Five were women. Efforts to reach victims or their families have not been successful, or relatives have declined to comment.

       Henek said two people who bought drugs that morning identified the defendants. One of them overdosed and went temporarily blind as he drove away, Henek said, and his female passenger was able to bring the vehicle to a stop and call for help. Court documents say that woman later also took drugs from the same batch, and that she, too, overdosed and survived.

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       Henek said they can directly tie eight overdoses to drugs they say Marbley sold. He said the Mazda, registered to Hayes and last said to be driven north into Maryland after the overdoses, has disappeared. Phone records show the couple had contact with some of the victims around the time of the sales, the prosecutor said.

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       In addition, Henek said surveillance video shows Hayes with a woman who overdosed Jan. 26, and survived. He said Hayes was with that same woman when she overdosed a second time, the morning of Jan. 28; that time, he said the woman died.

       “Instead of discarding these drugs, these two defendants went about selling these drugs to multiple customers,” Henek said, describing the deaths as demonstration of the “tragic consequences of fentanyl distribution.”