Hannah Goetz from WSOC TV9 interviewed Beth Abernathy about her son Marshall’s death by distrubution case and Beth’s quest for justice. Marshall died from fentanyl poisoning on June 30, 2022.
Watch the clip on YouTube or the WSOC TV9 web site.
Category: Personal Stories
Family opens up about 19-year-old’s overdose death
This is a two-part series originally published in July 2018 by Elizabeth Cook
SALISBURY — The message on White House stationery is brief. The president thanks Amy Morris of Salisbury for her letter about daughter Taylor’s overdose and death in November 2017. He and Melania send their prayers, he says. And he pledges his commitment to battle the opioid epidemic. “My Administration is fighting this crisis on all fronts, and examples like yours motivate me to keep up the fight,” the letter says. Below was his distinctive signature in bold, black ink: Donald J. Trump. Amy was shocked to receive the response. The president’s message mentioned Taylor by name. Amy believes Trump wants to see change. But she is not waiting around to see what happens. She’s sharing the story of her daughter’s death to bring opioids out of the forgotten shadows and open other parents’ eyes. “My concern is I don’t want to see another mother go through the heartache that I went through,” Amy says, “and I know that it’s happening over and over.”
Read all of Part 1 on the Salisbury Post website.
Read all of Part 2 on the Salisbury Post website.
Eastern Carolina County holds public opioid settlement discussion
Published: Jun. 20, 2023 at 9:03 PM EDT
BEAUFORT COUNTY, N.C. (WITN) – Beaufort County will receive a little over $3 million over the next 18 years in the opioid settlement, and Tuesday community members were able to discuss how they want to distribute it.
“When I first found out that my son had passed away from fentanyl, it was the Monday after we had his funeral on Saturday, so before then, I didn’t even know what illicit fentanyl was,” said Beaufort County resident Allena Hale.
The mother of Mikey Boyd, who passed away because of a fentanyl overdose back in March of 2022, was one of the community members to voice her opinion at Tuesday’s Behavioral Health Task Force Collaborative meeting.
“I don’t think there’s one simple solution it’s going to be efforts of parents; it’s going to be efforts of law enforcement, department agencies, EMS – it’s going to be all hands on deck to kind of combat this epidemic,” said Hale.
Read the full article and watch the video on the WITN web site.
Winston-Salem mother searches for answers after son dies from fentanyl overdose
For six long months, Andrea Scales didn’t know for sure how her only son died.
It took that long for a toxicology screen run by the state medical examiner’s office to come back with a ruling: fentanyl poisoning.
Someone slipped her son what he surely thought was a Percocet pill. Instead, the pill contained fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid similar to morphine, and it took his life.
Jeremiah “J5” Scales, an accomplished athlete at Parkland High School, was 19 years old.
“I knew nothing about fentanyl … one Percocet doesn’t kill you,” Scales said. “It was the last thing I ever expected.”
Now, a little over a year since she buried Jeremiah, she’s decided to see if she could save another mother from feeling the same crushing pain.
She allowed a photo of her son to be included on a month-long billboard campaign to educate and raise awareness about an epidemic that has killed thousands of North Carolinians.
“It just hurts … extremely painful to live without your only child,” Scales said. “Yes, I’m all for educating other people about it and doing whatever I can do.”
Read the full article on the Winston-Salem Journal website (subscription may be required).
Victims’ families fight illicit fentanyl in North Carolina, speak during local event
WATAUGA — The Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina and Forgotten Victims of North Carolina hosted an invitation-only event at App Ski Mtn. on Saturday, June 3, to provide victims’ loved ones the opportunity to share their story and honor their children, siblings and parents lost to illicit fentanyl poisoning.
The Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina Executive Director Barb Walsh lost her 24 year-old daughter Sophia in 2021 to fentanyl poisoning. Sophia, an App State graduate and successful business woman, was visiting someone in Banner Elk and is thought to have unknowingly consumed a drink laced with illicit fentanyl. While the case closed with no charges pursued, Walsh is committed to bringing awareness to the dangers of fentanyl poisoning and advocate for justice for victims and their families.
Loved ones of illicit fentanyl victims Timothy Daniel Cothron, Alex Bradford, Heaven Nelson, Michiko Duff Marshall Abbott and Brianna Culpepper spoke about their experiences. NC Department of Justice Community Partnership and Outreach Coordinator Holly Jones, NC District 93 Rep. Ray Pickett and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page discussed progress and intended actions related to fighting illicit fentanyl.
Local mom wants to spread awareness of the dangers of fentanyl
By Tessa Bradshaw at the Kernersville News June 1, 2023.
On Monday, 18 billboards went up around the Triad with faces of those the community has lost due tofentanyl poisoning. One of those faces was Walker town local Christian Wilson who died from fentanyl poisoning in 2019. The billboard reads, ‘join us and fight illicit fentanyl.Christian, Forever 19.
Christian’s mother, Crystal Wilson, of Walkertown, has made it her mission to help others who are going through this and to also help bring awareness to the rising issue of fentanyl in the county, state and country.
She explained that the 18 “angels” on the billboards, including her son, are only a fraction of the people that North Carolina has lost to fentanyl poisoning.
We say poisoning, not overdose. It is a poisoning because they don’t know what they’re taking.
An overdose is taking too much of a known substance.They don’tknow that this is there, so it’s considered a poisoning.
Crystal Wilson
This article is not available online, to read the full story from the Kernersville News, download the PDF scan of the article.
Burdened after Death: What you should know about North Carolina’s autopsy crisis
A severe autopsy backlog in North Carolina has added to the financial and emotional burdens of grieving families, a Charlotte Observer and News & Observer investigation revealed.
Here are three takeaways from Burdened after Death:
When people in North Carolina die unexpectedly, required medical investigations usually take more than 20 weeks. In nearly 1,400 cases since 2020, they took more than a year.
That crisis heaps more burdens on grieving family members during one of the worst periods of their lives. Some can’t touch funds they are entitled to inherit, leaving their biggest bills unpaid. Many must wait months for the answer to a burning question: Why did their loved one die?
The system is bogged down chiefly because there are too many bodies and too few pathologists and toxicologists to handle the load.
Read the full article on the Raleigh News and Observer web site.
Look out for these new billboards raising awareness about North Carolina fentanyl deaths
Jeremiah Scales and 18 other faces are in rotation on two Winston-Salem billboards along Business 40.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Illicit fentanyl is a deadly drug.
According to the state Department of Health and Human Services, there was a 22% increase in Fentanyl deaths in North Carolina in 2021.
Families of 19 of those lives taken too soon were brave enough to put their loved one’s faces on display here in the Triad.
A roadside tribute to Jeremiah Scales warmed the hearts of his grandmother and mother Andrea Scales.
“To see his face on the screen with other angels who have lost their lives to such a deadly poison,” Scales said. “His beautiful face is still alive in his home city it means so much.”
Jeremiah and 18 other faces are in rotation on two Winston-Salem billboards along Business 40.
Read the full story on the WFMY website.
NC law that punishes drug dealers not widely used despite increase in overdose deaths
For three years, Logan Overcash and his family waited for answers and waited for justice.
“We’ve got closure, but it’s not the closure that we want,” Overcash said.
Overcash’s brother-in-law Cory Moore went missing in September 2020; five months later police found his body in a wooded area in Sanford.
Overcash remembers Moore as a great guy who was full of funny stories.
“You could pretty much put him in any social environment and he would adapt. You know what I mean? Like, he could he can talk to anyone,” Overcash remembered.
While Overcash said Moore battled some demons throughout his life, he was on the right path before his death.
“It was just kind of one of the things that, you know, we tried to protect him from it as much as we could, and I guess it just found its way back to him,” Overcash said.
An investigation later uncovered that Moore died from an overdose. The Lee County Sheriff’s Office went on to arrest the individual who they believed sold him the drugs with a charge called ‘ death by distribution.
Read the full article on the ABC11 website.
Ashley Whaby Unknowingly Took Fentanyl and Died, So Why Has No One Been Held Accountable, Grandma Asks
Ashley Whaby was found dead the day after a party where she may have unknowingly ingested fentanyl. No one has been charged in her death, and her grandmother, Debbie Peeden, wants answers.
Ashley Whaby was at a party with a few friends one fall night in 2021 when she ingested a drug she believed she had used many times before. But unbeknownst to her, it was laced with a lethal dose of fentanyl, her loved ones say.
Ashley’s death left Debbie Peeden, her grandmother and the woman who raised her, with a life-altering wound and an unbreakable resolve for answers. But thus far, she’s gotten few that have satisfied her, she tells Inside Edition Digital in an in-depth interview.
Read the full article on the Inside Edition website.