18-year-old Jacob Cope died on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. According to a Facebook post from Franklin County Sheriff Kevin White, Cope died from accidentally ingesting “the tiniest amount of fentanyl
According to a Facebook post from Franklin County Sheriff Kevin White, Cope died from accidentally ingesting “the tiniest amount of fentanyl.”
“His family is scarred forever,” White said.
Cope’s friend, 2023 Heritage High School graduate Wilson Moore, was also found dead that morning.
White said he keeps Cope’s photo in his office to remind him why he wanted to become Franklin County Sheriff.
“It hits close to home for me,” he said. “It will serve as a constant reminder of the passion I have to end the rapid decline that is eroding our neighborhoods, our state and our country.”
It is unclear if fentanyl ingestion is the cause of Moore’s death, but Moore’s mother suspects it is drug-related.
The Wake school system hasn’t had any reported overdoses, but other school systems have.
Wake County school officials plan to recommend naloxone — the overdose reversal medication — in every school and a policy for staff on training and using it.
Superintendent Robert Taylor told the school board’s safety and security committee Tuesday that officials will come to the committee in April with a proposed policy and a timeline for getting naloxone in every school, early learning center and administrative office.
Naloxone is a prescription medication that reverses opioid overdoses. It targets opioid receptors in the body and blocks the effects of opioid drugs, restoring breathing in a person who has overdosed. It must be administered soon after an overdose has begun and only lasts a short time. It can be administered in several ways but is commonly administered as a nasal spray.
The Wake school system hasn’t had any reported overdoses, but other school systems have.
Last year, naloxone was administered 21 times for a suspected overdose at a North Carolina school, usually by a school resource officer.
The district wants to have naloxone in part because of rising opioid overdoses among 10- to 19-year-olds, said Kelly Creech, district senior director of health and crisis prevention services.
Across the state, school resource officers, not school employees, carry naloxone.
Any upcoming policy proposal would reflect training requirements for employees who want to be able to administer it.
On Tuesday, school board members asked questions about who would have the ability to administer naloxone.
Under state law, school systems must have permission from the state health director to allow non-medical employees to administer naloxone.
Most school systems don’t have a policy in place for school employees to administer naloxone. Of the 86 counties that responded to the state survey, 83 reported school resource officers carrying naloxone.
The school system wants two doses in about 200 schools, early learning centers and central services offices. The average dose lasts between two and three years.
Two U.S. senators penned an “urgent request” to President Joe Biden this weekend, pushing for the use of executive authority to end the de minimis trade “loophole.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Oh.) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fl.) on Saturday sent an open letter to the president asking him to end duty-free treatment for e-commerce shipments worth under $800-an exemption created by Section 321 of the Tariff Act.
According to the lawmakers, the rule is being exploited to facilitate “the import of illegal products, goods produced with forced labor, and other contraband to the detriment of U.S. manufacturers, workers and communities.” De minimis doesn’t just provide foreign shippers with financial benefits, they argued-it also allows bad actors to circumvent customs enforcement, as individual packages of lower value often enter the country “with minimal to zero inspections.”
The legislators said that Chinese goods made with forced labor “appear to be the heaviest users of de minimis, undermining enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).” About 3 million parcels enter the country each day using the de minimis rule, and they pose an “elevated risk” of being made with forced labor, containing counterfeit products or contributing to the fentanyl crisis, as drugs have been smuggled in small, low-value shipments.
A pair of recent Triangle-area high school graduates who were friends linked through their love of baseball died over the weekend.
Two young men who were friends and shared a love of baseball died over the weekend, devastating families and teammates.
Wilson Moore, a 2023 graduate of Heritage High, and Jacob Cope, who graduated from Bunn High in 2023, both passed away on Saturday.
Both Moore and Cope played on a travel baseball team and their respective high school teams before graduating. The two met through work and developed a friendship. The sudden nature of their deaths shocked and saddened friends and family in recent days.
Moore’s GoFundMe said the family suspects Moore died from “accidental substance poisoning.” Cope, 18, also has a GoFundMe to support his family.
Rolesville police are investigating. A toxicology report has not been finalized.
Barry and Lisa Bennett hold a graduation photo of their son, 22-year-old Mason Bennett, who died a year ago Thursday. Olivia Neeley | Times
After a fleeting moment of peace each morning, it doesn’t take long for the gut-wrenching reality to set in for Lisa Bennett.
“When you go to sleep and you wake up … you have this brief second where you think everything is fine and (then) it hits you over and over again, day after day,” she said through tears.
For Bennett, her reality is facing yet another day without her 22-year-old son, Mason Bennett. Thursday marks the first anniversary of his death. Bennett contends he died after taking what he believed was a 30 mg Percocet, a prescription painkiller.
“It wasn’t a Percocet,” Bennett said. “It was a pressed pill, which is mostly what’s being sold now. There was nothing else in it other than cocaine and fentanyl.”
Eight months after Mason’s death, Wilson police charged 21-year-old Claire Brittle in connection with his death. Brittle faces a felony death by distribution charge as well as several drug-related charges.
Police said Brittle was “responsible for selling the victim narcotics at the time of his death,” according to a Wilson Police Department press release. When police arrested Brittle in October, they found various drugs in her home, including “85 dosage units of pressed Percocet pills,” according to arrest warrants.
Brittle was also charged with felony possession of a Schedule II controlled substance. Arrest warrants indicate that charge relates to fentanyl possession.
A group of people who lost family members to fentanyl held an educational advocacy and networking event in Lexington.
On Saturday, the group “Fentvic” came together to start safety conversations within the community about the dangers of illicit fentanyl.
The group said they want to focus on counterfeit pressed pills, like Adderall, Xanax, and Percocet, as well as the access of life-saving naloxone in schools and the community.
Participants at the event had the option to bring posters of their family members to honor their loved ones they have lost to fentanyl abuse.
CDC data has ranked North Carolina 4th in the nation in fentanyl-related deaths last year. North Carolina data also shows a combined 2,615 fentanyl deaths between 2013 and Sept. 2023.
For more information on Fentvic and to see any of their upcoming events throughout North Carolina, visit their website here.
DAVIDSON COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — Eight people in North Carolina die every day, because of fentanyl, according to the North Carolina Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
On Saturday, people who have lost someone to the deadly drug met other families, public officials, health advocates and law enforcement in Davidson County to work together to fight the fentanyl crisis.
“We want to educate people on this,” said Mike Loomis, a founder of Race Against Drugs.
Mike and his wife, Lorie started Race Against Drugs to be a support for families, after they lost their son, James. “You can’t get over something like that, it complete changes your life and we don’t want another parent to lose their child to drugs laced with fentanyl,” Lorie said.
The e-commerce giant eBay will pay $59 million in a settlement with the Justice Department over thousands of pill press machines sold on the platform, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
The machines can be used to manufacture counterfeit pills that look just like prescription pills but instead can be laced with substances like fentanyl, a synthetic opioid drug that is largely fueling the deadliest overdose crisis in U.S. history.
The company failed to verify buyers’ identities and keep records required by law, and many people who bought pill presses on eBay have been prosecuted in connection with trafficking illegal counterfeit pills, the Justice Department said.
“He just really had a special heart,” Union County resident Linda Hibbets said.
Hibbets, raised her grandson, 18-year-old Brian Terrano. He grew up loving adventures, sports, and anything to do with Gatlinburg. After a trip there, the next morning he was supposed to go to school.
“I told my husband to help me get him off the bed, and I did CPR, I’m an RN, and I couldn’t save my grandson and that was really hard,” Hibbets said. “I’ve saved others, but I couldn’t save him, he was gone.”
It’s a story UCSO Lieutenant James Maye has heard too often.
UNION COUNTY, N.C. — Union County is working to speed up justice with its crime lab and newly accredited FIELDS of evidence, which means faster results while putting criminals behind bars and getting innocent people out.
Channel 9′s Hannah Goetz spoke with forensic chemists, crime scene investigators, and law enforcement officers on Thursday about the work they are doing, which is helping to cut back on the state lab’s backlog.
The digital forensic lab has equipment used to analyze things, such as text messages, which could lead to an arrest.
“It’s key for us to create a timeline of that victim’s last hours and this room does a great job of providing us that,” said Lt. James Maye.
The work in the digital forensic lab can help in cases of fentanyl poisoning to identify drug dealers.
“This evidence is used to determine which source provided the narcotics that ended the life of a victim,” Maye said.
The crime lab’s most recent accreditation was in the fall of 2023, which allowed officials to process fingerprints and blood alcohol testing on-site.
The blood alcohol analysis, which could be crucial in a DWI arrest, starts there where vials are filled and prepped for testing.
“The alcohol that’s in the blood will slowly go into the air above the sample,” said forensic chemist, Dayla Rich.
“So, you test not the blood, but the air that is coming out of it?” Goetz asked.
“Correct,” said Rich.
Running those tests in-house can provide results weeks or even months faster. Other local law enforcement agencies can use the lab too.
“Sheriff (Eddie) Cathey is encouraging everyone to bring us your phones, your blood, anything we can do to get criminals off the street bring it to us we’ll take care of it,” said Lt. Maye.
In the coming months, they’re hoping to be accredited in other fields of evidence analysis, including DNA, blood drug toxicology, and seized drugs.
The lab will not conduct autopsies on-site. That will be the responsibility of the regional medical examiner’s office.
The Union County Sheriff’s Office hopes to eventually do postmortem-blood-drug testing for death by distribution cases.
