3 April 27–MAy 3, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents TOXIC SHOCK A Plano family grieving a daughter stolen by fentanyl offers a stark warning: Any pill can kill. BY SIMONE CARTER D ozens of Plano residents shuffled toward the shade pavilion adjacent to a large playground at Prairie Meadow Park. It was starting to get chilly the evening of Sunday, April 16, four days before what would have been Sienna Vaughn’s 17th birthday. A woman walked on the neatly manicured grass with two small white dogs, and mourners passed out custom wristbands in virtually every color. The bracelets bore the symbol of a heart with angel wings, along with the words “#siennasstory” and “One Pill Can Kill.” Sienna’s peers with Plano Senior High School cheer had organized the candlelight vigil, attended by many of her classmates. Some locked arms as they listened to the event’s speakers. Sienna’s mother, Stephanie Vaughn, fondly remembers her daughter as a cheerleader with impeccable eyeliner skills and an emo flair, a young woman who was friends with everyone. Dad Ryan Vaughn bonded with Sienna over music, taking her to see Deftones, her favorite band, in concert. Less than two months earlier, on Feb. 19, Sienna died af- ter taking what she thought was a Percocet, a combination opioid prescription drug. She didn’t know it, but the illicit pill had been laced with a lethal amount of fentanyl. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid used to treat severe pain. The state’s health department estimates that since 2019, fen- tanyl deaths in Texas have spiked more than 500%. At the vigil, Sienna’s photo appeared on a large pop-up banner, along with pictures of 31 others who’d been “stolen” by the drug. Folding tables were packed with flyers and T- shirts and boxes of Narcan, an over-the-counter nasal spray used to treat opioid overdoses. A student from Plano Senior High School stood in front of the pavilion. He introduced himself as Julian and said he’d been asked to deliver a sermon about hope. “It’s getting me,” Julian said, his voice faltering, “just to see such a young girl … someone who goes to my school, someone in my community, someone who is affected by this issue — by this plague — that is over this generation, that is over this era of time.” The world is shifting fast, Julian added. “Seeing all these things changing,” he said, “seeing people being taken away from us, people going away, it’s — it’s scary.” Sienna was a light to her friends and family and touched many lives. Now she’s part of a growing wave of fatal fen- tanyl poisonings crashing over the Lone Star State. Carroll- ton, a neighboring North Texas city, has earned the grim distinction over the past several years of being a hub for fen- tanyl deaths. Law enforcement announced in early February that a pair of Carrollton dealers had been federally charged in connection with the poisonings of “as many as 10 juvenile[s],” three of which were lethal. Student after student is succumbing to the synthetic opi- oid, which is up to 50 times more potent than heroin. Ac- cording to the Department of Justice, 2 milligrams of fentanyl — the amount that fits on a pencil’s tip, about as much as several grains of salt — could kill. Victims’ families frequently say they weren’t aware that the drug is being cut into what dealers claim are brand-name prescription pills. Some hadn’t even heard of fentanyl before laying their loved one to rest. Advocates are blasting school districts for what they see as a lack of action and are warning teens against trusting even their own best friends. Gone are the carefree, often for- mative days of high-school drug experimentation. With the sun now almost fully set, Stephanie acknowl- edged the Plano community for its support in the weeks fol- lowing her daughter’s death. She warned everyone against thinking that it could never happen to them. “It doesn’t happen on the other side of town. It doesn’t happen in a ‘good’ neighborhood. Oh, it can happen to you,” Vaughn said. “You can’t smell it. You can’t taste it. You don’t have any idea it is in your house. “We had no idea when we went up [to Sienna’s room] I would find my daughter blue on the bed.” S ome 100 attendees trickled into the Plano Event Center on March 30 as gray clouds loomed outside. Somber in- strumental music played on the auditorium’s speakers at the Plano Police Department’s “Fentanyl Drug Forum.” As the Vaughns walked to their seats up front, Stephanie smiled and waved at another audience member. A pair of women situated close to the stage talked quietly. “Why aren’t more people here? This is important,” one asked roughly 10 minutes before start-time. And, a few min- utes later: “It’s starting to fill up.” Jeri Horton arrived wearing a purple shirt bearing the photo of a young woman’s face and took a seat on the right side of the elevated stage. Panelists to the left included an emergency room physician and a Drug Enforcement Admin- istration official, who explained how an opioid used to treat hospital patients’ pain has been contorted into a scythe. It was the first time Horton had spoken publicly about the fentanyl death of her daughter, Jessie. At times during the event, she gently rocked herself side to side. Horton described her child as a “mama’s girl” with a pas- sion for photography, music and anime. Jessie also struggled with a substance-use disorder, but she didn’t want to die, Horton said. She’d taken what she thought was OxyContin from someone she’d trusted. She didn’t realize that it was ac- tually fentanyl. Cases in which law enforcement encountered drugs that tested positive for fentanyl have skyrocketed in recent years, with the number of episodes in the U.S. more than doubling between 2014 and 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas witnessed a more than 140% spike in synthetic opioid deaths from 2019 to 2020, from 423 fatalities to 1,050. Guy Baker, with the DEA, explained at the forum that fen- tanyl makes its way into pills in “clandestine laboratories.” It’s often done in Mexico through cartels in unregulated facilities before crossing over the border. It may be processed Alicia Claytor Stephanie Vaughn points to Sienna’s memorial program. | UNFAIR PARK | >> p6
