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.
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.
Sophomore Alyssa Price said she lost two friends to overdoses, and now she’s raising funds to provide free Narcan to students.
An NC State student is raising funds to help fight overdoses on campus.
Sophomore Alyssa Price said she lost two friends to overdoses, so she wanted to do something to help save others.
That’s why she is raising funds to provide Narcan – a medicine that reverses opioid overdose – free to students.
The university has increased resources after 14 students deaths, including two fatal overdoses, during the 2022-23 school year.
Price said this is one area where she felt she could do more.
“They created a bunch of preventative measures last year,” Price said. “But we did not have the part that was, ‘What if it happened?'”
She said she’s trying to help students be more prepared – and proactive – in the case of an emergency.
NC State prevention services does provide free Narcan kits to any campus community member – upon request. The university said it has distributed 744 kits throughout the past two years.
Price started a GofundMe to help raise money for her free Narcan initiative.
MONROE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — The Fentanyl Victims Network met Saturday morning to continue the fight against the deadly drug taking over the nation.
Families who lost loved ones in the fentanyl poisoning shared their stories and pictures in hopes of uplifting each other.
Debbie Dalton was one of them.
“There is no demographic; there is no person that is safe from this evil that is taking our children,” said Dalton.
In 2016, she lost her son Hunter to the drug after she said a good friend offered it to him.
“Hunter joked about it, like, ‘I don’t do this. I’m 23.’ He laughed about it. But unbeknownst to Hunter and his good friend, it was cut with fentanyl, and it gave my 6’2″ son a heart attack. He didn’t stand a chance against it. He was so strong that he survived for six days, and I held his hand, but he never regained consciousness,” Dalton said.
In his memory, she started the Hunter Dalton HD Life Foundation. Her mission now is to spare other families from going through the same heartache.
North Carolina is fourth in the nation in fentanyl deaths, but only 10th in population. Between September 2013 and September 2023, over 1600 people died from the drug in Gaston, Mecklenburg, and Union counties.
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Dozens of new laws are now in effect in North Carolina as of Dec 1.
Some deal with stricter fines for drug traffickers, while others deal with election law. WECT News took a closer look at two of them.
Senate Bill 41
Part of Senate Bill 41, introduced by State Senator Danny Britt Jr., is now in effect in North Carolina. The part of the law now in effect allows concealed carry permit holders to bring firearms to places of worship that also have schools.
“An act to increase the fine imposed on persons convicted of trafficking in heroin, fentanyl, or carfentanil” will increase the fines for people convicted of drug trafficking who have between 4-14 grams of the substance on them.
The fine increase is from $50,000 to $500,000. That’s a 900% increase.
Barbara Walsh lost her daughter, Sophia, to fentanyl poisoning at just 24 years old. Sophia died after drinking fentanyl from a glass of water, but the family didn’t find that out until months after her death.
Walsh says she hopes the new law with an increased fine will be enough to curb traffickers from selling or distributing the lethal drug.
“I think that is a deterrent for people to think twice about trafficking fentanyl, and maybe it will save somebody’s life,” Walsh said.
While the new law can’t bring back her daughter, she hopes it could save others’ lives in the future.
“We’re paying it forward for unfortunately the eight people who die every day from fentanyl in North Carolina,” Walsh said.
The DEA reports that just one gram of fentanyl can kill 500 people.
Walsh founded the non-profit, Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina, after her daughter’s death. She works with families across the state who have lost a loved one to fentanyl and encourages those who want support to join.
GASTONIA, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — There are a lot of families hurting in North Carolina.
The state has seen 16,000 killed from fentanyl this year through July alone, according to the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina.
That’s 16,000 families missing a loved one because of a growing nationwide fentanyl epidemic. Tracy Sauderson-Ross wishes she would have been home back on Sept. 26, 2022, when her 16-year-old daughter, Abi, was dealing with leg pain and Abi’s boyfriend tried to help.
“He decided to call a buddy of his to get a Percocet,” described Saunderson-Ross. “She took half of the Percocet, it was a bar, and it was 36 nanograms of fentanyl, and she passed away in the middle of the night.”
Marshall Abbott was out with friends on June 30, 2022, the day before his 30th birthday. A friend he was with bought something. The family still doesn’t know what it was, but they know a loving father didn’t wake up.
“Marshall had 72 nanograms of fentanyl in his system,” said Elizabeth Abernathy. “He didn’t stand a chance. He was gone before he even crawled into the bed.”
Changes to a North Carolina law make it easier to prosecute people who distribute drugs, including fentanyl, if the drug user dies
Overview:
Carolina Public Press interviewed six parents of children who died and the partner of a man who did as well. Fentanyl, a powerful narcotic painkiller, was involved in each death. Often, those close to the victims reported, prosecutors declined to bring charges for death by distribution, saying the evidence was not strong enough.
Under a state law that takes effect next month, anyone who provides certain drugs to a person who dies after taking them may be prosecuted for second-degree murder — whether they received money for the drugs or shared them freely.
“Death by distribution” first became a crime in North Carolina in 2019. Originally, the law applied only to people who got paid for drugs that later proved fatal. In September, legislators expanded the law’s reach to include anyone who provides certain drugs, including fentanyl, when those drugs result in an overdose death.
Carolina Public Press interviewed six parents of children who died and the partner of a man who died as well. Fentanyl, a powerful narcotic painkiller, was involved in each death. Most of the families reported that prosecutors declined to bring charges for death by distribution, saying that the evidence was not strong enough.
The family members, as well as people who study drug use or work to combat it, are divided over whether the law’s approach is good or bad. Those in favor described death by distribution charges as essential to bring justice in fentanyl death cases. Critics argued that the strategy could unjustly criminalize and disproportionately affect substance users and people of color.
The last bathroom stall on the left. An afternoon math class. The house across the street. This weekend’s party.
Students sent Debbie Dalton letters after she spoke to them about her son, who died after taking a line of fentanyl-laced cocaine in 2016. If schools let her in, she’s one of the only sources of education North Carolina teens get on fentanyl’s dangers.
Fentanyl is easy for teens to get — and, these days, it’s even harder to escape.
After losing his best friend to the very drugs the two of them would use together, one Charlotte teen shared his winding journey from an innocent swig of liquor to a dependency on $7 pills, posing as Percocets, that circulated through his school.
“I didn’t know who I was,” said 17-year-old Dylan Krebs, remembering the height of his addiction. “I had completely forgotten everything about me.”
Not only could he not help himself then, he says, but his parents and teachers seemed to have no idea. He says students sold illegal painkillers in classrooms and recalls only once a teacher at school warning teens of the dangers of drugs.
“Everything is laced,” officials have long warned, and one fentanyl pill — about 2 milligrams — with the potent opioid is enough to kill a person.
The fentanyl crisis has taken the lives of more than 13,000 North Carolinians in recent years and it’s currently killing eight North Carolinians a day. The rise in overdose deaths is driven by illegally manufactured fentanyl.
The group Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina recently joined NC Newsline for an extended conversation, in which founder Barb Walsh shared her family’s story, described the organization she leads, and shared some of the policy changes the group is seeking from state leaders.
Editor’s note: This is a rebroadcast of an interview NC Newsline originally aired August 20, 2023.
Allen Michael “Mikey” Boyd had a “heart of gold” and loved interacting with people with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities. He was a “beautiful soul with a free spirit” who loved his younger brothers, spending time with friends and skateboarding, his mother, Allena Hale, shares with groups of people she meets at events that raise awareness about the dangers of illicit fentanyl use.
Hale, of Pamlico Beach, lost Boyd to fentanyl poisoning on March 31, 2022 when he was just 22 years old.
Through her work, she hopes to educate people and comfort grieving families who have similar stories of young family members that were kind, smart and funny but met untimely deaths.
What is Fentanyl?
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl is used by medical professionals to treat patients with severe pain, and is used to treat patients with chronic pain who are “physically more tolerant to other opioids.”
When fentanyl is produced illegally, it is dropped on blotter paper, smoked, snorted/sniffed or made into pills that look similar to other opioids, per the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
