well da thank you so much for being with us today um I know we've had a chance to kind of talk about a lot of the issues that are facing arizonans and I think that you've got a story to tell and and we appreciate your willingness to be able to be willing to come here and talk to us today and one of the reasons we're here is that you know I I had a son who struggled with some drug addiction and and ultimately that's not what cost him his life he died after getting clean and I feel we feel somewhat blessed but you you're a family that also struggled with um somebody who lost their life to fenel poisy kind of walk us through that's Hannah Hannah yeah and how old was Hannah uh she was 16 at the time and tell us a little bit about what happened with Hannah so this happened to her in Phoenix and she was at her dad's and she had a boyfriend that was 18 and he was staying at the house with them and he apparently had a little bit of an addiction to perc cetes and he had a friend that he would call and get perc cetes from and one day Hannah had decided that she wanted to call this guy up and ask him for some perco setes and she hadn't really taken him before so we we were kind of still wondering as to why she even did this but so she got the perco setes and she took one and she ended up going into cardiac arrest almost instantly and when we went to the hospital it turned out that it wasn't a perco set it was a pure pure laced fenel pill that she had taken and how did you get the call or how did you find out I got a phone call and it was my son's 21st birthday so I got the phone call and I saw it was my son and I thought oh he's calling me to tell me how his birthday went you know and so I answered the phone and I was just like hey how's it going how's your birthday and he just was screaming he was just like Mom Mom and you know he's all I think Hannah's dead and I was like telling him that's not funny you know I said honey that's not funny don't talk like that when I saw her in the ICU I just looked at her and knew that this was you know they had called me on the way there and said they got her stabilized so I thought oh okay you know whatever she did I'm going to ring her neck you know I'm going to going to give her a piece of my mind because we had initially thought she must have taken something because my son said there was some perco setes on the on the dresser so they told us right away that they didn't think she would make it and she didn't how did you when did you find out that this was the perco setes or the the fenel in those fake perco setes did you know immediately or was it you started kind of reveal itself after there was no opioids in her system no benzos no methamphetamines nothing everything came up negative so they were asking us do you they even asked us do you think she got a hold of fenel and we were all like no she wouldn't do that and um her boyfriend ended up texting my other daughter at about 2:00 in the morning and he had said I have messages between her and this the guy who gave her the pills and he goes she did take perco setes and so we had told the nurse that she did take a perco set and the nurse said well we we need to run a test for Fentanyl and so about 4:00 in the morning after she had been in the hospital since a little bit after 8 the night before they came back and said that she tested positive for fentanyl so that's how we found out I'm so sorry did the did the police come to the hospital or how did was there any police interaction in in this whole thing now that you know that fenel is involved were they at the hospital as well um we did have a police officer show up later that day to take a report and a statement from US when they called her time of death uh we did have a police officer show up about an hour after and he had to take picture it was really hard thing for us for me to see I had to leave the room because they had to take pictures of her entire body when you got the cause of death did it come back what did the cause of death come back from the medical examiner um intoxification due to fentanyl poisoning and even that that point had the police got they had not gotten involved beyond that beyond the just the initial report um so he said he was going to send her stuff over to the DEA and that I would hear from the DEA but I never got a call and so I called the DEA probably about six or seven times and didn't get a response and so the last time I called them I said if somebody doesn't call me back I'm going to go stand out in front of your building and I'm going to demand to see somebody and talk to someone about my CA her case I got a call back within a few hours from the detective and then he called me back about a day later and he said well I'm going to talk to you know my boss and we're going to see what we can do about it so it really basically was I I kind of had to If I had not called the de I don't think that they would have ever even known about her case at all do you feel like maybe it's changed a little bit back in 2019 a lot of people still didn't know what fenel was um initially they seemed like they were trying to work with us I did have to bug them a lot I say bug because I feel like I was constantly calling and emailing and trying to get them to do something it was kind of upsetting but I do know there are other parents who have recently lost their children who are still having some issues with the law enforcement it's sad to say but um they keep asking me how I got something done you know what did I do to get the attention that they want their kids to get for their fentanyl poisoning now we talked a little bit about this before we got on camera tell a tell everybody a little bit about what you did cuz I after I heard this I said we're hiring over here at our agency too you kind of became a little bit of a detective for your daughter Hannah's boyfriend had sent me a text a couple weeks later and said he still has the same phone number I just text him and he's still selling drugs and he sent me the screenshots of the messages and he had said in there that he moved to Tucson so I I kind of decided to do my own little I guess sleuthing and I pretended like I was somebody else and used a fake number like I use one of those apps on my phone and I started texting him snuck some pictures of him and turned him over to the DEA and I told him where he works and he this guy ended up telling me the days that he works never saw him face to face except when I kind of went over there and took the pictures but he didn't see me and um I gave them all the information and they came down to Tucson and arrested him about months after Hannah passed away and what's been the outcome of this arrest so has he has he gone through his court process yet or he has um on November 20th of 2023 they finally sentenced him he only got six years in federal prison for causing her death he didn't actually get sentenced until November of 2023 so it was almost 4 and a half years later wow and you think about how many lives more lives he might have impacted in the four years right I know a friend of mine Josephine Dunn you've worked with her on the Ashley Dunn act and and I've tried I've been down there testifying trying to get the Ashley dun act through um what would you like to see different in the state when you're a drug dealer and you know what you're giving somebody and you know especially if they don't know what it is I mean he clearly he admitted like in my case he admitted that he knew that he was giving her fentanyl even though she didn't ask for that um I feel like they need to be held more accountable and you know if if it's going to cause a death I think it should be a murder and one thing that I know a lot of us want to change is is calling it an overdose because it's not an overdose it's it's a poison I've have been very no matter where I go I go to a lot of police things and I hear the word overdose and I immediately it makes me cringe because most of these are they're all po poisonings every single one of them especially in a case like your daughter's Hannah she had this was not a fenal pill that she thought she was taking right it's disingenuine and it's not okay to the families who've lost loved ones cuz this is these people are being poisoned um with these different with this Dangerous Drug they are and I know the Border issue is is a problem um I I don't really know like what there is that we can do to get the Border you know make it stronger but I think that's that's one of the problems is is there's too much coming in through the Border but there's also I don't I feel like the people who are selling it aren't being held accountable in the way that they should be yeah I think it's I think you're right we know where we can stop it from coming into the country which is at the border but there also needs to be some consequences for the people that are selling it here that are causing the loss of life as well it sucks because you know our kids died or you know somebody died from this and it just needs to be taken more seriously I agree and I I know that you're doing a lot and I'm I really appreciate that you're talking with me because you know that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to get the word out there and we're trying to get the message out there and this is a reminder to us so that we can always do better and that we need to because it gets so easy to get you get these cases that come in and sometimes it's you be really dismissive and so I appreciate you telling your story because it helps remind us these are families these are people that that uh lost a loved one and and we owe it to you the families to make sure that we we dot every eye and cross every tea and then we investigate these cases to their fullest and there are people that are responsible the people who sold them these drugs they are responsible and they should be held accountable yeah what message do you have for parents out there parents of of young CH children family members cuz it this is transcending youth it's transcending age we are seeing younger people we're seeing middle-age elderly we even had in the state of Arizona in 2021 I believe there was 33 um deaths from fenal poisonings and seven of them were under the age of one well little baby's going to put anything that they see in their mouth and you know it's horrible because I have seen more and more lately of you know children 3 years old 2 years old 11 months old who are dying because they got a hold of something that their parents left out my daughter told me two weeks before she died that she was smarter and she knew better and that she would never do anything like this that she would never take fentanyl she wasn't that stupid and then two weeks later she's gone so people need to be educated if it's not out of a prescription bottle from your doctor and your pharmacist then you have no idea what you're taking there's it could be anything and chances are it's going to have fentanyl in it if something doesn't change it's going to end up there's not going to be a single family out there that isn't affected by fentel well thank you so much for coming here today and talking to us and we know you're passionate about this and we're I appreciate your passion for it because I'm passionate about it as well we see the impacts of what's Happening all the drugs coming across the border all the drugs coming into our community the fenal poisonings that are happening I know that Hannah would be proud of you for what you're doing and the fight you're taking thank you for being with us today anything else I just want to thank you for having me here today I really appreciate it thank you and I look forward to working with you we're going to be doing some stuff together and trying to combat this in every which way we can so thank you everybody for joining us today and da thank you for coming here today thank you I appreciate it thank you thank you