After Losing Their Sons to Fentanyl, Mothers Want People To Be Proactive About The Opioid Crisis

Mothers who have lost their children to fentanyl spoke with the Rotary Club of Tulsa about being proactive in fighting the opioid crisis.

"He was 18, he will forever be 18," said one mother, Rebekah Brown. 

Rebekah lost her son Cole in 2021 after he took a pill he didn't know was laced with fentanyl.

"My son did not want to die. He was poisoned. He was deceived. And he was murdered," she said. 

Brown and two other mothers shared the stories of losing their children to the drug with the Rotary Club of Tulsa.

"We were going to celebrate his 25th birthday. Well, Gavin never made it to 25," Delana Pritchard said.

"We found him deceased in our home in Broken Arrow. It was the worst day of our lives," another mother, Nancy Solomon, said.

Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler also spoke at the meeting. He said fighting this drug and saving lives needs to be a priority in our state.

"Oklahoma made a huge mistake when we made the possession of any drug a misdemeanor. And so now it's so commonplace that now we're seeing a lot of people who are overdosing and dying at our hospitals," said Kunzweiler. 

He said law enforcement needs more money to hire investigators to find the dealers so he can prosecute them as murderers.

"If you deal drugs and somebody dies as a result of the drugs that you dealt, you're looking at a homicide prosecution, and I've prosecuted a couple drug dealers for that already," he said. 

After losing her son Cole, Rebekah said her years would never be the same. 

"I will never have my son again for another Christmas, another birthday, another holiday. Or at the dinner table, he'll never be there," she said.

She never wants anyone else to go through the pain of losing someone to fentanyl like she did. "I am very committed to speaking to every student that I possibly can in the rest of my life, so this doesn't happen to them or another family," said Brown. 

Speakers from the meeting say everyone should carry a dose of Naloxone, the drug that reverses an opioid overdose, because you never know when you could save a life. 

You can get free Naloxone and fentanyl test strips from the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Just enter your information on this website, and they will be sent in the mail.