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NC autopsy backlog frustrates families, leaves cases open

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.

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Chinese fentanyl cartel ordered to pay Akron family $18M by judge

Ruling is first-of-it’s kind to go after overseas fentanyl producers

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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‘They are dealing death’: WRAL Investigates goes undercover to get firsthand look at fentanyl crisis in NC

It’s a killer the size of grain of sand or the tip of a pen. Illegal fentanyl is running rampant through North Carolina, and the consequences are terrifying.

Fentanyl deaths are on the rise in North Carolina. Last year, 4,000 people lost their lives to drug overdoses in our state. The majority — 77% — died due to fentanyl poisoning.

The Nash County Sheriff’s Office recently confiscated enough fentanyl to kill every person in the county. WRAL Investigates spent several days with undercover agents and confidential informants on the streets of Nash County as law enforcement battles the war on this poison.

Early one summer morning, the Nash County Sheriff’s Special Response Team conducted a search at a mobile home. A family, including kids in their pajamas, filed out of the home. One person came out in handcuffs.

“Children put things in their mouth. That makes it more alarming,” said one member of the response team.

With their work done at the mobile home, the next raid was on, this time in Rocky Mount. A flash bang disrupts the silence at a home on Pine Street.The SRT quickly enters the home yelling, “Come to the center of the room” and “Hands Up!”

“This is an older neighborhood with a lot of good families in it. This house — drugs were bought out of it yesterday,” WRAL Investigates was told.

A search revealed fentanyl and heroin, as well as a stolen gun. The SRT also found high-powered ammunition.

“As you can see with tips of these they are capable of going through wood-framed houses and bullet-proof vests,” investigators told WRAL Investigates.

Targeting guns, drugs and gangs is the mission of the Nash County Sheriff’s Office under the direction of Sheriff Keith Stone.

Read the full article on the WRAL website.

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Chuck Todd: China and Mexico ‘are not willing partners’ in addressing fentanyl crisis

The DEA calls fentanyl “the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered” yet the U.S. has struggled over administrations to address the growing crisis.

Chuck Todd discusses the sources of fentanyl coming into the US on Meet the Press

In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas discusses the crisis of fentanyl flowing into America and the Biden administration’s plan to handle an expected surge of migrants at the southern border.

Chuck Todd interviews Alejandro Mayorkas and discusses fentanyl beginning at the 8:53 mark.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) joins Meet the Press to discuss his state’s challenges in fighting addiction and the federal government’s failed responses in previous administrations.

Chuck Todd interviews Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown regarding the fentanyl crisis

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram says the Biden administration’s approach to the fentanyl epidemic is not a war on drugs but “a fight to save lives” and addresses China and Mexico’s roles in the illicit drug trade in an interview with Meet the Press.

Eastern Carolina County holds public opioid settlement discussion

By Alyssa Hefner

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.

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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.

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Fentanyl-related deaths among children increased more than 30-fold between 2013 and 2021

CNN — 

Fatal overdoses involving fentanyl have surged in recent years in the US and new research shows that deaths among children have increased significantly, mirroring trends among adults.

More than 5,000 children and teens have died from overdoses involving fentanyl in the past two decades, according to data published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. More than half of those deaths occurred in the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There were about 1,550 pediatric deaths from fentanyl in 2021 – over 30 times more than in 2013, when the wave of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids started in the US.

Watch the segment and read the full article on the CNN web site.

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