A suspected small-time drug dealer finds himself in big trouble.

It’s so big, it’s unprecedented in Butler County.

Detectives in two police departments say 30-year-old Joshua A. Hakeem is responsible for a pair of drug overdose deaths on consecutive days last fall.

Authorities believe the victims — Chester Dietrich and John Kolakowski — bought the same batch of fentanyl-laced heroin from the defendant.

That potent batch, investigators believe, caused a wave of overdoses in Butler County, prompting District Attorney Richard Goldinger in October 2015 to issue a public warning to addicts.

Most of the overdose victims survived. Dietrich, 26, of Fenelton and Kolakowski, 29, of Butler did not.

Butler police on Wednesday charged Hakeem with selling bags containing the lethal drug mix to Dietrich on Oct. 17, 2015. Hours after buying the dope, Dietrich died of an overdose in a store bathroom at the Pullman Square shopping plaza.

Hakeem is charged with drug delivery resulting in death, the equivalent of third-degree murder in Pennsylvania, and drug trafficking.

City police filed their case just two days after Butler Township police charged Hakeem with peddling fentanyl-laced heroin to Kolakowski on Oct. 18.

Kolakowski a short time later suffered a fatal overdose in a room at a Route 8 hotel.

On Monday, township police charged Hakeem with drug delivery resulting in death, involuntary manslaughter and felony drug possession.

He is being held in the Butler County Prison on $200,000 bail.

Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger praised the work by police and the county’s drug task force in bringing the charges.

That effort, he said, reflects his own commitment to use the law — when appropriate — to punish people who supply drugs that lead to someone’s death.

“If we can establish who delivered it and that it caused a death, we will file charges every time,” Goldinger said Wednesday. “We want to do everything we can to prosecute those who deliver this crap here.”

While the DA’s office has pursued the relatively new charge before, this is the first time it’s been applied to one suspect accused in multiple overdose deaths, authorities acknowledged.

But county detective Tim Fennell, who heads the Butler County Drug Task Force, described Hakeem as anything but a major dealer.

“He sold to support his own habit,” Fennell said.

Fennell and his task force assisted in the investigations that led to both cases being filed this week.

Hakeem, it turned out, was already in the county prison, having been arrested July 28 for a probation violation.

The Butler police case began the night of Oct. 17 when Butler Ambulance Service was called to the Kmart at Pullman Square, where Dietrich was found unresponsive in one of the bathrooms.

Paramedics tried to resuscitate him before he was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital, where he later died.

In the bathroom, police recovered a hypodermic needle, according to court documents, and two empty stamp bags of suspected heroin marked with the name “Predator” and a symbol of a shark on them.

It did not take police long to identify Hakeem as a suspect in the death investigation.

During an Oct. 22 visit to the defendant’s home on Wagner Avenue, county probation officers found drug contraband. Fennell was called and recovered an empty bag of heroin stamped “Predator.”

Hakeem in an interview that day admitted he previously sold Dietrich two “Predator” bags of heroin, said Butler police Lt. Detective Anthony Fatta.

Dietrich initiated the drug deal, which allegedly happened Oct. 17 in the back yard of Hakeem’s home. The defendant advised him that the bags were “very potent” and contained fentanyl, investigators said.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid painkiller that is similar to morphine but 50 to 100 times more powerful, drug abuse experts say.

Police on Nov. 25 received Dietrich’s autopsy report, which showed he died of “fentanyl toxicity,” documents said.

A subsequent search of Hakeem’s cell phone records, Fatta said, revealed text messages that corroborated the Oct. 17 drug deal with Dietrich.

In the Butler Township police case, Detective Thomas Vensel charged Hakeem with selling Kolakowski five stamp bags of a heroin-fentanyl mix on Oct. 18 at the Days Inn.

Several hours later, hotel staff discovered Kolakowski dead in his room, authorities said. By then, rigor mortis had set in and a used syringe was still clenched in his right hand.

Vensel said police also found five stamp bags of suspected heroin marked “Mojo.” An autopsy eventually ruled Kolakowski died of combined heroin and fentanyl toxicity.

During his Oct. 22 interview with police, Hakeem acknowledged that on three occasions between Oct. 16 and 18 he sold the victim bags of heroin marked both “Mojo” and “Predator,” documents said.

But authorities, Fennell said, suspect the different bags contained the same heroin-fentanyl mix. He refused to elaborate or say where Hakeem had acquired the bags he sold.

Investigators said the defendant is not suspected in any other drug overdoses.