Six deaths over three years. Drugs are taking a toll on this Raleigh high school.
Ten people gathered in front of Leesville Road High School on a recent Saturday morning to pray for students who are under pressure – to earn good grades, make friends, handle bullies. And they prayed for those whose lives are touched by drugs.
“We’re turning to prayer because, quite frankly, we’re in a crisis,” said Deanna Sohn, a parent who helped organize a twice-a-month prayer group outside the northwest Raleigh school.
A string of teen deaths has shaken the Leesville Road school community, where at least six students or recent graduates have died in the past three years of overdoses or other circumstances involving drugs. The school saw more reported cases of drug possession in 2016 than any other Wake County high school. Last year, it saw the third-highest number.
Now parents are looking for answers about how to keep their kids safe from addiction as the opioid epidemic continues and prescription drugs are more easily accessible than alcohol for some teens.
“I am not going to bury my child,” said Tina Stevens, whose daughter attends Leesville Road. “Whatever it takes.”
Schools have been battling drugs for decades, with much of the focus on marijuana. But experts say students are increasingly turning to prescription drugs such as Xanax, which can be deadly in high doses – especially if it is laced with opioids such as fentanyl, a painkiller that is 50 times more powerful than heroin.
Wake County, the largest school district in North Carolina with more than 160,000 students, saw 499 reported cases of drug possession in 2016-17. That's up 25.6 percent from the 397 cases reported the year before. Meanwhile, the number of reported cases of drug possession in all North Carolina schools dropped 7.5 percent.
“Our students admit to trying alcohol. Our students admit to trying drugs. Our students admit to trying tobacco products,” said Crystal Reardon, director of counseling for Wake schools. “We have the information. Now we need more adults prepared to respond to it."
This year, Wake set aside $25,000 in federal grant money to train school social workers in drug and alcohol counseling, Reardon said. The training, which will begin this spring, aims to teach them how to respond to students who are drinking or using drugs. The goal is also to better inform students about the effects of drug and alcohol abuse and to help them recognize warning signs in their peers.
The district decided to spend the money this way after seeing students’ responses to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015.
Across the state, about 18 percent of students surveyed said they had taken prescription drugs that were not prescribed to them. About 25 percent said they’d been offered or sold an illegal drug at school in the past year.
Meanwhile, about 30 percent of students surveyed said they had at least one drink of alcohol in the last month, and about 22 percent said they smoked marijuana at least once in the last month.
Taking a toll
Leesville Road High School, nestled amid affluent suburbs near Interstate 540, enrolls more than 2,200 students. The school exceeded the state’s academic growth standards last school year, and Wake school leaders gathered there in September to celebrate the school’s graduation rate of 94 percent, among the highest in the district.
Last school year, 54.4 percent of the school’s incoming freshmen were academically proficient, compared to 38.6 percent statewide. Less than 19 percent of the school’s students were economically disadvantaged – much lower than the statewide percentage of 49.2.
Parents and students say the community rallies behind Leesville Road Elementary, Middle and High schools, which share a campus. The high school principal, A.J. Mutillo, has been known to shovel snow outside the school’s entrance.
“Come here on Friday nights for football, and you see your neighbors,” said Shay Greene, a pastor who helped organize the prayer group outside the school.
The growing list of drug-related deaths, including two just before Christmas, has taken a toll, parents say. The News & Observer is only naming the students or recent graduates whose families have agreed to speak publicly.
Caleb Mehlman and another teen graduated from Leesville Road in 2017. They died Dec. 19 after overdosing on the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam, or Xanax, and methadone, which is often used to treat drug addiction.
Less than a month later, a 19-year-old Leesville Road graduate died Jan. 15 of a multi-drug overdose, according to media reports. He was found in his dorm room at Penn State University, where he was a sophomore.
Lauren Jenkins, 17, died after a car crash on March 17, 2017, near Leesville Road High School, where she was a senior. She left the scene of the accident, and her body was found in the woods nearby two days later. She died of hypothermia, and she had alcohol and methamphetamine in her system, according to documents from the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
An 18-year-old senior at Leesville Road died Oct. 25, 2016. An autopsy report says he overdosed on U-47700, an opioid that is eight times more powerful than morphine.
On July 7, 2015, a 16-year-old student overdosed on the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam, according to an autopsy report. He was revived but was declared brain dead five days later. He would have started his junior year at Leesville Road the following month.
“I get to a point where all I can do is pray – just pray that (students) make the right choice,” said Darleen Tibbs, who has two children at Leesville Road High.
D’Lyn Ford said her daughter, who graduated last year, wasn’t close with the students and recent graduates who died.
“Still, it touched her a tremendous amount,” Ford said.
Reardon said it’s crucial for adults to talk to children and teens about drugs.
“Parents have to be aware that this is not something that’s happening to other people’s children,” she said. “It has the potential to happen within any family, any child.
“It’s being aware. It’s knowing your child. It’s knowing who your children are hanging out with, who your children are associating with, what they’re engaging in in school, continuing that open line of communication with the school. As a parent, it’s tapping into all of those resources that are available.”
Mixing drugs
The statistics on drug-related deaths can be staggering:
▪ The number of people in North Carolina who died from opioid-related overdoses increased by more than 800 percent between 1999 and 2016, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.
▪ In 2015, 118 people between the ages of 15 and 24 died from unintentional overdoses statewide. That’s 8.6 percent of total overdose deaths that year.
▪ About 9,000 people in the United States died after overdosing on benzodiazepines such as Xanax in 2015, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Opioids were also involved in about 71 percent of those deaths.
Some teenagers start out smoking marijuana, which can make them agitated and anxious when the high wears off, said Britta Starke, program director of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment Program at UNC-Chapel Hill. Then some turn to benzodiazepines, commonly called benzos, to calm down, Starke said. Opioids can then act as a stimulant.
“That’s where you’ll start to see these overdoses, because they’re mixing so many things because of the symptoms they’re experiencing from the absence of another one,” Starke said.
Many doctors are reluctant to prescribe benzos to teenagers, Starke said. But they’re available — in medicine cabinets, from friends, from local dealers and from people who make them.
'A sense of hope'
Drugs aren’t a problem unique to Leesville Road High School. And parents who attend the prayer group every other Saturday in front of the school say their concerns go beyond addiction and overdoses.
On March 24, they prayed for a Leesville Road High student who died in a fire-related incident that week.
It was the day thousands of people gathered at rallies, including in Raleigh, for March for Our Lives to push for an end to gun violence. They prayed for students and families affected by mass shootings in schools.
They prayed for teachers and administrators and parents. They prayed that students will be kind to each other.
“We have children that are part of this community, and this community is something that we’re very passionate about,” said Greene, the pastor and parent. “And we feel strongly that our kids need to have a sense of hope beyond today.”
Muttillo, the principal, said it’s up to adults to be persistent.
“It’s all about how relentless the adults in (students’) lives are,” he said. “We have teachers and counselors and administrators who are just phenomenal people who don’t give up on kids, even when a kid maybe appears like they may be giving up on him or herself. They just keep plugging away.
“We have so many stories of kids that end up being successful who faced challenges, made bad choices. But you just stick with them, and eventually, many of them come around. It’s just being relentless and making sure they understand that, regardless of the choice they might make, that we’re here to support them in any way we can.”
Drugs in Wake County high schools
Here are the number of reported cases of drug possession during the 2016-17 school year:
Garner — 46
Enloe — 34
Leesville Road — 29
Middle Creek — 23
East Wake — 22
Sanderson — 22
Broughton — 21
Holly Springs — 19
Heritage — 18
Wakefield — 18
Knightdale — 17
Athens Drive — 16
Cary — 16
Rolesville — 16
Wake Forest — 15
Millbrook — 10
This story was originally published April 3, 2018 at 8:18 AM with the headline "Six deaths over three years. Drugs are taking a toll on this Raleigh high school.."