Fentanyl overdose death triggers a mother's plea for action

A Kamloops, B.C.mother who helped her son fight addiction, only to lose him to fentanyl,wants others to learn from the tragic deathof 22-year-old Ryan Pinneo.

Sandra Tully said her son often slept lateas he worked the nightshift, but she went in to check on him to find the charismatic basketball playerslumped lifeless over a chair.

Her son had admitted thathe was addicted to OxyContin and detoxed at home several times, Tully said,before he accidentally took a fatal dose of a pill laced with a fatal amount of fentanyl on Jan. 20, 2016.

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B.C. has seen aaten-fold spike in fentanyl-relatedoverdoses since 2012, with approximately 139 people dying from overdose in 2015 alone.

"If this is so prevalent why are we not doing something about this?" said Tully.

"This is killing our kids. We need to be out there talking about it. I think there is some shame attached to it."

Stop downplaying says mom

That shame is helping kill children, said Tully who refused to hide how and why her son died.

She chides people who downplay drug use in Kamloops.

"If I can save one kid ... I don't want Ryan's death to be for nought," said Tully. "I havedragged kids down thatdabble in more than just a little bit of pot and I've sat them down on his bed and said this is real life. I don't have my son anymore and I don't want your parents to go through what we are going through so please just stop."

She said Ryan was from an average family and looking forward to a future. He had been honest about his addiction with his mother.

The night before he died she refused to give him a light for a smoke wanting him to be safe.

I found him slumped in his chair

"He looked at me and he goes,'Why you gotta be like that mom?' And I knew he was on something and I was like, 'Why you gotta take drugs Ryan?'" said Tully.

She cried as she recalledwhat she found the next morning.

"I slowly opened the door and I found him slumped in his chair."

A week later the Coroner's office confirmed that Ryan had a fatal amount of fentanyl in his system.

The pills he took looked exactly like OxyContin, said his father Kirk Pinneo.

"It's everywhere," said Pinneo.

To listen to the full audio, click the link labelled:Fentanyl overdose death triggers a mother's plea for action.