CEDAR PARK, Texas — A Cedar Park family is mourning after their 18-year-old son's sudden death last month.
Now Matthew Wright's family is teaming up with local outreach and law enforcement groups to warn more people about the dangers of fentanyl.
On Tuesday, the room at City Reach Church in Cedar Park was filled with family, friends and other loved ones of not just Wright, but dozens of other families who have been impacted by the lethal drug.
Texas Against Fentanyl and other advocates joined each other to raise awareness. Wright's loved ones say he had just graduated from high school and had been accepted into Texas State University, where he planned to study psychology. However, he passed away suddenly on May 2 at his home.
Stefanie Turner, who founded Texas Against Fentanyl, also lost her son to fentanyl poisoning. She said fentanyl is often laced with other drugs, so those who ingest it likely don't know they've taken it. That's what Turner said happened in Wright's case.
"He was the youngest of three. He had two older brothers, and he died unexpectedly at home," Turner said. "And that's the story so often, that there's not warning signs. Your kid takes something and they go to bed at night, and they don't wake up in the morning."
Turner worked with lawmakers last year to get "Tucker's Law" passed, which requires school education around the drug. She said it's important to call these cases "poisonings" rather than overdoses because of how often fentanyl is mixed in with other substances.
"If you go to a bar and you order a cocktail and someone serves you arsenic and you die, you were poisoned," Turner said. "And if you order an anxiety medication or a pain pill and you think that's what you're taking, and it's laced with the illicit amount of fentanyl and you die, you've been poisoned."
A sergeant with the Williamson County Sheriff's Office said the county has already seen 14 deaths involving fentanyl this year. The state has seen more than 8,000 overdoses. But in just a fourth of those, someone administered the life-saving drug Narcan.
Cedar Park Police Chief Mike Harmon said his department started to see the drug around 2020. He said his own fear has been whether or not his kids will graduate high school, but rather make it out alive considering how popular this drug has circulated. So he and others at the event say that Matthew's story will help raise awareness to save lives.