Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina
Stronger Together! Grassroots campaign against illicit fentanyl in NC IRS recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity EIN: 88-3921380
In the list of horrors that a parent might ever experience, losing one’s child because she unknowingly grabbed and drank a bottle of water laced with fentanyl has to be among the worst imaginable. And tragically, that’s what happened to a North Carolina woman named Barb Walsh in 2021 when her daughter Sophia died almost instantly from fentanyl poisoning.
Read the full story and listen to the interview on the NC Newsline website.
CONCORD, N.C. — Families in Cabarrus County are pushing for justice for loved ones who have died from fentanyl.
Beth Abernathy said her son, Marshall Abbott, died due to fentanyl poisoning last year one day before his 30th birthday.
She attended a pretrial hearing Tuesday for Aaron Furr at the Cabarrus County Courthouse. Furr was charged in connection with the death.
Furr is one of five people in Cabarrus County who have been charged with felony death by distribution since the law went into effect in 2019.
Read the full article and watch the video on the WSOCTV9 website.
NORTH CAROLINA — Some North Carolina families are waiting months, even a year, to find out how their loved one died due to the state’s autopsy backlog.
Lawmakers are trying to address this in several different ways, but it is all tied up in the looming budget right now.
Barbara Walsh is the founder of Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina, an organization for families of fentanyl victims. She said fixing the autopsy backlog is critical to getting families closure and justice.
For months, Walsh had no idea what killed her 24-year-old daughter Sofia who had just moved to Charlotte for a new job.
“She died because she drank a water bottle that had diluted fentanyl in it,” Walsh said.
Now, families she’s helping through her organization are waiting even longer, sometimes over a year, for toxicology results as the medical examiner’s office faces a massive backlog in autopsies.
Walsh is vocal about the state budget as some lawmakers have promised to help clear the autopsy backlog.
One of the new proposals would pay pathologists more to try and fill positions at the short-staffed medical examiner’s office, which has seen a 30% increase in cases. Cases involving suspected overdose deaths are up by 58%.
Read the full story and watch the video on the WSOCTV9 website.
CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) -On Wednesday, it was announced a Summit County judge ruled in favor of the Rauh family, who’s son died of a fentanyl overdose in 2015, and ordered a Chinese cartel to pay $18 million.
Thomas “Tommy” Rauh became addicted to prescription opioids after a rollerblading accident, which then led to him using heroin.
According to his father James Rauh, Tommy tried to overcome the addiction but took a fatal dose in 2015, laced with fentanyl.
The fentanyl that killed Tommy was traced to, and produced by, the Zheng drug trafficking cartel in China.
“Our son Tommy was stolen from us,” Rauh said. “He never stood a chance against the incredibly potent poison provided by the Zhengs. All for what? The reckless and malicious greed of the Zheng cartel. To save American lives, we must stop the foreign manufacturers and traffickers of illegal fentanyl and hold them accountable.”
Read the full article and watch the video on the Channel 19 website.
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The Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina will rally at the N.C. State Capitol Building later this month, pushing for stronger penalties for illegal distribution of the synthetic opioid and more funding for early intervention, Naloxone and processing toxicology reports. They are also asking state lawmakers for opioid overdoses to be investigated as homicides.
As NC Newsline has reported, North Carolina has been hard hit by fentanyl, an epidemic within the larger opioid epidemic. Some 13,671 North Carolinians have been killed by fentanyl in the last nine years, according to data from the N.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner — an average of eight people per day.
Even those numbers likely do not take in the full scope of the problem, medical experts say.
In North Carolina, death certificates don’t have a specific code for fentanyl’s involvement in a drug overdose. There is a code – T40.4 — for “other synthetic narcotic overdose.” The Epidemiology, Surveillance and Informatics unit of the N.C. Division of Public Health’s Injury and Violence Prevention Branch notes that most of these cases are “due to illicitly manufactured fentanyl and fentanyl analogues,” but can also include prescription fentanyl and other, less potent synthetic narcotics like Tramadol.
An analysis of statistics from the state medical examiner’s office found overdose deaths with the T40.4 code rose from 442 in 2016 (the first year for which the office had such statistics) to 3,163 in 2021 — an increase of 616%.
As of April, according to OCME data, there were 1,116 fentanyl-positive overdose deaths in the state so far this year.
NC Fentanyl Victim Families invite the public to join as they Rise Up Against Fentanyl at the
| FENTANYL VICTIMS NETWORK of NC Barb Walsh, Executive Director barb@fentvic.org 919-614-3830 website: fentvic.org 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit EIN #88-3921380 | FORGOTTEN VICTIMS of NORTH CAROLINA Patricia Drewes, Founder patriciadrewes@yahoo.com 252-204-9611 FB page link: http://forgottenvictimsofnc.org/ |
“They need to get deadly fentanyl off of our streets,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “We can do more to hold accountable drug traffickers and keep the people of North Carolina safe. I’ll do everything in my power to rid our state of this scourge.”
For more extensive press release email request to barb@fentvic.org
Read the full article on the NC DOJ website.
This article appeared in the July 17 print edition of the Rutherford Courier. The text from the article was extracted from a scan of the print article to make it easier to read.
By Scott Carpenter
Bill’s CREEK — Fentanyl is potent opioid drug, considered 50 times more powerful than heroin. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were over 107,00 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2022. and 2/3 were fentanyl related.
Fentanyl affects every corner of the United States including Rutherford County. A nonprofit group called Forgotten Victims of Fentanyl is working to raise awareness of fentanyl in order to prevent more people deaths. Maria Deckert is spearheading the effort in Rutherford County. The local organization is aligned with other similar groups across North Carolina.
Forgotten Victims of Fentanyl is hosting meeting on Sunday, August 6, from 2-4 p.m. at Bill’s Creek Community Center, 1978 Club House Road, Lake Lure. This meeting is for families and friends of those who have died from fentanyl overdoses. And it is for anyone with an interest in learning more about the fentanyl problem. Deckert said Monday. “We want to Come together, and share our stories. We want to help saves by informing the public about the dangers of fentanyl.”
For Deckert who lives in Rutherford County, this is personal. Her son, Robert Deckert, was 33 years old when he died in Florida just over four years ago. He had struggled with drug abuse for several years but was going through rehabilitation.
“I don’t want to see others die like he did. I don’t want other families to go through the grief that we are going through,” Deckert said.
Since 2013. more than 13,600 in North Carolina have been killed by fentanyl. Statistics indicate there been 84 fentanyl related deaths in Rutherford County over the past nine years.
“This means there are 84 families that are permanently damaged by fentanyl,” Deckert said.
For the same period 57 fentanyl deaths in Cleveland County and 50 fentanyl deaths in McDowell County.
Eckert says fentanyl has killed not only active drug users but people who have accidentally come into contact with the drug.
“Fentanyl does not discriminate,” she said. “Fentanyl kills babies, toddlers, middle schoolers and high schoolers, college students young adults.”
In order to better combat the fentanyl problem, Eckert says more people need to be made aware of it.
“We want to prevent more fentanyl deaths,” she said.
For more information about the Forgotten Victims of Fentanyl meeting, call 828-291-7951
You can find the original article on the Rutherford Courier website however it requires a subscription to access it.
