15-year-old’s fatal fentanyl overdose rocks Hays County family

Janel Rodriguez wanted her son’s upcoming 16th birthday to be special. Noah had overdosed in May on a mixture of cocaine and benzodiazepine. He spent a week in the hospital — four days in intensive care. “You’re not going to survive another one,” Rodriguez warned her son. “Be smart.”

In the last two months, he and three other Hays Consolidated Independent School District students — two 17-year-olds and another 15-year-old — died of fentanyl poisoning, marking a grim trend. Illicit fentanyl is the top killer of Americans ages 18 to 45, according to a December report by advocacy group Families Against Fentanyl. The death toll in that age range increased 170 percent from 2020 to 2021. And in Texas, from 2015 to 2021, fentanyl deaths across the board increased 670 percent to 3,260, according to a report the group published in February . At Noah’s funeral, Rodriguez warned his friends to stop risking their lives. Some of them overdosed days later. But they survived. Local and federal authorities addressed the rise in fentanyl-related deaths in Hays County at a news conference Sept. 8. Kyle Police Department Chief Jeff Barnett said the department has investigated 25 fentanyl-related overdoses in 2022 — many of which involved minors, seven of which proved fatal. San Marcos investigated 45 related calls for service in the same time period. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Tyson Hodges said the agency would partner with local law enforcement to form an overdose task force to stop the distribution of counterfeit pills and to educate people through the One Pill Can Kill campaign. Hodges showed those in attendance pictures of two nearly identical pills — one legally produced and a fentanyl-laced counterfeit — emphasizing the danger the increasingly prevalent counterfeits pose.