Family pushes for change after daughter unknowingly takes fentanyl, dies of overdose
An Oklahoma family’s world was turned upside down when they got the news that their daughter had died of a fentanyl overdose.
It turns out, what she thought was an oxycodone pill turned out to be a deadly counterfeit.
“Aug. 6, it was probably about 11 or 11:30 at night, I was actually in bed and they had called my wife’s phone to inform us that she was at the emergency room,” Keith Montgomery said.
Montgomery will never forget the night he lost his daughter, Lea Marie.
“The doctor came in and told us that she had passed away, and it was a fentanyl overdose,” Montgomery said.
But Lea Marie never intended to take fentanyl.
“Going back almost five years when we started to see different drug organizations basically purchasing black market fentanyl and pressing it to look like U.S. pharmaceuticals,” Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman Mark Woodward said.
Woodward has tracked these laced pills since they made their way to Oklahoma.
“We had eight overdose deaths within about a six-to-seven-day period,” Woodward said.
Montgomery admits his daughter had her struggles with addictions.
“She was just adventurous and she was a leader. She wasn’t a follower,” he said. “She led the group wherever she was. It was heartbreaking to see that because you just never expect your child to be involved in it to that level.
“You can’t make people go to treatment. You can’t make people quit whatever they’re doing. It’s until they’re ready to get the help. And so one day she called and she said, ‘I’m ready for help.’”
And Lea Marie did get help. She went to rehab, moved into a sober living house and was baptized.
“Commented about this was the most wonderful time of her life. She had found her faith, her family, her friends,” Montgomery said.
Lea Marie had taken a job working for the very program that helped her get sober. She had found her calling – helping others get sober and find faith.
Then, just two days before her 31st birthday – after nearly four years of sobriety – Lea Marie relapsed.
“It was one night she decided to take a pill. But she didn’t know what was in it, and unfortunately, the first time after being clean and sober, it killed her,” Montgomery said. “I was fortunate because we knew where she had gotten them through the police. So, we were able to track it back to the dealer.”
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has made a priority of holding drug producers and distributors accountable.
“We are making the decision to charge drug traffickers with first-degree murder,” he said.
Hunter and his team have recommended a bill that would give them more power to prosecute traffickers of fentanyl.
“When you’ve got a drug like this, which is fundamentally and demonstrably deadly, we just think … we think the law needs to be stricter. We think the punishment needs to be more severe,” Hunter said.
The attorney general’s office charged the man who sold laced pills to Lea Marie with first-degree murder. He’s at the Oklahoma County Jail awaiting trial.
“I’m sure that he’s being prosecuted to the limits of the law, and please tell Mr. Montgomery that,” Hunter said.
“But there’s a time, and that time is now, to hold people accountable. They’re killing people, and they don’t care,” Montgomery said. “My daughter’s life was worth probably a $40 pill. That’s not right. When you lose a child, it’s really just … it changes your life from that point on forever. It really tears part of your heart out.”