Teens in rehab; CMS wrestler dead. Parents say fentanyl has breached school.

A boyish light had just seeped back into Laird Ramirez’ eyes.

The end of wrestling season brought more free time. With it, he mixed music, cracked jokes and relaxed. He loved life, and he loved his family. He was 17 and acting like it.

His smile was big, and his heart was beating.

The Hough High School rising junior wore well the unique independence that comes with being a teenager, his mom said.

But on July 1, he needed his parents one last time.

Authorities called Gwyneth Brown and Chris Ramirez to the two-story home in the Stratford Forest neighborhood.

They needed to identify his body — robbed of light and color — at a home in Cornelius, paramedics told them.

The night before he’d come and gone from the home, a friend’s house, a few times. At around 3 a.m., he’d returned for good and was chatting with friends when he abruptly beelined for a bed. He said didn’t feel good, his friends told his parents.

Twelve hours later, friends found him dead.

A fatal dose of fentanyl — from a pill he thought was a Percocet — killed him, his mom says.

Nine days later, police arrested and charged 21-year-old Ehsanullah “Sean” Ayaar with death by distribution, according to the Cornelius Police Department. He’s accused of supplying the drug that killed a juvenile, police said previously. A police statement indicates the death was in the Stratford Forest neighborhood.

That’s where Laird died, according to his mother. An autopsy is still pending.

One pill with fentanyl in it — about 2 milligrams — is enough to kill a person.

Those pills were sold in Hough High’s lunchrooms and snorted in its bathrooms, parents told the Observer.

According to four Hough High parents who spoke to the Observer, Laird was one of at least eight students taking pills by the end of the school year. Now, at least four are spending summer break in rehab.

Officials at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools say substance abuse issues aren’t isolated and that the addictive and pervasive pills don’t shy from any particular neighborhoods, people or schools. The district did not answer direct questions about the scope of issues at Hough High, including how many students have recently been found with drugs or died of drug overdoses. CMS doesn’t track student admissions to drug rehab unless parents alert the school.

Administrators take all tips seriously and immediately investigate reports made by phone, in person or through the district’s website, Hough High Principal David Farley said in a statement.

“My heart goes out to those parents,” said Carrie Sargent, the district’s mental health manager. “...It’s problematic when we, as a community, focus on a specific neighborhood or a specific school because that’s not how drug use or drug trends or drug trafficking works.”

Located in Cornelius — an affluent suburb of Lake Norman, about 20 miles north of Charlotte — Hough High has about 2,600 students.

While CMS says Hough High is not an outlier, it is not clear how widespread student overdose deaths are. Cases typically reach the public only when police arrest dealers or parents choose to speak out.

The Charlotte Observer in recent weeks pieced together a snapshot of drugs in the high school through police reports and conversations with parents, advocates and school officials.

All the kids thought the pills were Percocets, parents said. That’s what “Mama TT,” or her dealers, told them.

Charlotte teens with fentanyl

In June, police found Tina Marie Alexander in a Lake Norman home with 988 fentanyl pills, 17 grams of methamphetamine and 2 grams of psychedelic mushrooms, according to Cornelius Police.

The 45-year-old now sits in the Mecklenburg County jail with a $1 million bond, charged with several felonies related to drug distribution and possession. Matthew Christian Dominguez, 21, arrested with Alexander, faces similar charges, police records show.

“We can... take her off the streets,” said Brown, Laird’s mother. “But the reality is that there’s 100 more cockroaches behind her.”

Fentanyl is the most prevalent drug in Charlotte, according to police.

It’s a sneaky drug, Ramirez, Laird’s father, said. His son never showed signs of drug use, he said. And just a month before he passed, he’d sat him down to talk about the fentanyl epidemic he’s seen worsen in the last five years.

“Don’t worry, dad,” Laird told him. “My friends and I, we don’t deal with any of that crap. That’s ridiculous.”

In the Carolinas last year, the Department of Homeland Security Investigations seized 222 pounds of fentanyl — three times the amount capable of killing every resident in both states.

The department said last year the Charlotte-area was being supplied by the Cartel Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a Mexican-based transnational drug trafficking organization with a well-established network in the Carolinas.

Fentanyl has been responsible for an estimated 6,000 deaths in North Carolina over the last 2 years.

Laird’s mom told the Observer: “It’s all so hidden here (in Cornelius) because this has got to be this great little community where nothing goes wrong. We can’t admit this horrific problem and that’s killing our teens.”

Fentanyl in high schools

One Hough High mother said in an interview she knew for weeks her son was taking drugs. She could tell. She just didn’t know what kind.

She agreed to be interviewed on the condition of using Ann, her middle name only, to protect her family’s identity and safety.

He was probably smoking weed, she thought back in April, but she tested him against 12-panel drug tests again and again. Nothing came back positive, but she was sure something was in his system.

Most multi-panel tests available at drug stores, for example, don’t detect synthetic opioid.

She needed to buy specific fentanyl test strips used on drug substances or paraphernalia, she learned later. She’d have to order the tests online.

So when she found powder-covered straws in her son’s backpack, she dipped the tips in small dishes of water, placed the test in the liquid and waited.

It was fentanyl.

When confronted, her 16-year-old son admitted he’d taken the pills, but he swore they were Percocets.

Illicitly produced fentanyl, according to the DEA, shows up in pills mimicking pharmaceutical drugs or is sold alone or in combination with heroin and other substances. In medical settings, fentanyl is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as an pain reliever and anesthetic.

Similar to other opioids, fentanyl can create feelings of relaxation, euphoria and pain relief. Overdoses typically widen pupils, turn skin cold and trigger respiratory failure — which leads to death.

When Ann told her son what the tests showed, things started adding up.

“Yeah, well, that makes sense,” Ann’s son told her. “My friend OD’ed a few days ago.”

Spinning, Ann called her son’s friend’s mother to tell her what she’d learned.

She already knew.

She rang another mom. She knew, too.

Both were already looking into rehab.

One mom got a call from the school when her son started “rapidly going downhill,” Ann said. He was Ann’s son’s busmate — one of his closest friends, someone he sat next to every morning and afternoon. When the school searched him and found pills, he was arrested, she said.

Cash App drug sales

Ann started backtracking, trying to piece together every new piece of information. When she sent what she found to the Cornelius Police Department, they asked how she knew the names, she recalled to the Observer in a recent interview.

She’d gone through her son’s bank statements and saw a slew of Cash App transactions. She could see how much he spent and who he sent money to.

Toward the end of the school year, Ann’s son missed a class and went across the street from campus, she could see through his phone’s shared location. He told her he’d taken a double lunch and had simply walked across the street to eat.

Those were lies, Ann said. She later found out he was at a house in a neighborhood across the street, at the home of a fellow student she believes also has been using drugs.

“There’s just too many outlets,” she said. “Even if it’s not on school grounds, it’s directly across the street. It’s just scary to think about sending him back there where he’d have that kind of accessibility and temptation.”

When news broke of Cornelius Police arresting two people six miles from Hough High, Ann recognized the address — again from her son’s locations where she suspected he bought or did drugs.

As police arrested and booked the two accused drug dealers, Ann watched her oldest son graduate from Hough High. Pomp and Circumstance, America’s graduation song, played as her youngest sat next to her. He watched his older brother flip his tassel and hold up his diploma. That would be him in less than two years.

Or maybe it wouldn’t, Ann thought. Maybe they’d move, maybe he should go to private school, or maybe she’d send him to military school. The thought of sending him back to Hough High scares her.

Rehab: the new summer camp

Marie’s 16-year-old son was a “good child,” she said. He took honors classes at Hough High every day and was home and in bed by 10:30 every night.

She worried only in the way every mother does.

Now, he’s in rehab for the summer.

He, too, snorted the pills, his friends told her. The sophomore got them in his honors math class. They cost $7.

“Seven dollars for a child’s life,” she said. “For $7 they were going to kill my son.”

Marie, from Cornelius, spoke with the Observer on the condition of using only her middle name, citing concerns for her son’s privacy.

He doesn’t seem to understand how bad it could have been, she says.

“I didn’t die,” he said to her after a day in a Charlotte outpatient rehab. ”I’m okay. Don’t worry.”

She worries.

She stashes Narcan in her home and checks on her son every night. When the school found straws used for ingesting drugs in her son’s backpack, she didn’t sleep for three days.

“I was trying to put it all together,” she said.

She had names, addresses and payments of dealers who were supplying drugs directly to kids. She gave it all to the school and police, she said.

Then she’d lay awake, no longer wondering what her son would have for lunch the next day, but what rehab site he would go to.

She’s read all the information she could find on substance abuse and treatment programs near Charlotte. There were two outpatient options.

Teens over 14 must voluntarily enroll in outpatient treatment centers, Marie learned. Otherwise, parents or anyone with first-hand knowledge of a teen’s substance abuse can petition for involuntary commitment.

Marie and other parents told the Observer they didn’t know drugs — other than alcohol and weed — had breached the school until it was too late. She wished the school had notified all parents when leaders first found drugs on campus during the past school year. Schools, they say, should educate students and parents on the new risks that come with taking drugs now that fentanyl has taken over.

“Now, if you take something that’s not from a doctor, it’s going to have fentanyl in it,” she said. “One hundred percent.”

Fentanyl education in Charlotte

Mecklenburg County high schools give anti-drug education as mandated under North Carolina Health Education standards.

There are no plans to alter current drug education outlines, according to Susan Vernon-Devlin, CMS’ executive communications director, other than increasing lessons on vaping in middle and high school campuses next year. Any future curriculum changes across CMS would likely incorporate the DEA’s “One Pill Can Kill” campaign, which focuses on laced or counterfeit drugs.

CMS makes curriculum decisions based on data, said Sargent, the district’s mental health manager, and schools don’t see a high enough number of pill or fentanyl-related violations to expand overdose education across the district. Most violations relate to alcohol or marijuana.

For example, last month two local teens — Laird’s friends — died after speeding away from officers, throwing cans of alcohol out the window and ramming into a pole.

When substance abuse or pill-related reports come in, Student Assistance Program counselors, which rotate between 10 to 15 schools, would be the first to address them, Sargent said. SAPs work with students who violate the district’s alcohol and drug code of conduct or students who are referred by other parents or students.

The Observer has requested CMS records to show how many referrals each school had. According to the state’s Department of Public Instruction, possession of controlled substances was the most frequently reported crime across North Carolina schools during the 2021-2022 school year at 5,250 cases. That number increased 14% since before the pandemic.

‘Save someone’s life’

Hough High students receive substance abuse education and support via weekly social emotional learning lessons offered by CMS on topics ranging from suicide to violence and drugs, Principal Farley told the Observer in a statement in response to questions.

Still, parents wish the curriculum included more fentanyl-specific information.

“We can’t do these generic ‘drugs are bad for you’ warnings anymore,” said Debbie Dalton. She provides some presentations about the dangers in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Her son, Hunter Dalton, grew up on Lake Norman. He died after he took a line of fentanyl-laced cocaine in 2016. The 23-year-old attended Hopewell High School and had just graduated college when he was hospitalized for seven days. He never regained consciousness.

Years later — in his untouched, penguin-adorned room — Dalton found her son’s bucket list. “Save someone’s life,” it read.

That’s what she’s trying to do with every school visit supplemented by presentations of Hunter’s incredible life and tragic death. She’s channeled her cyclic grief into the Hunter Dalton #HDLife Foundation — a nod to Hunter’s way of approaching life.

“Oh, just living the HD Life,” Hunter started saying in middle school after someone would ask him how he was doing.

She introduces students to Hunter and walks them through the dangers of fentanyl.

It hits some, like the child who promised he’d never touch drugs. He didn’t want to put his mother in Dalton’s shoes.

It brushes past others, who chuckle when she starts talking about marijuana. She tries to make herself available to parents by staying after school or returning the next day. They rarely come.

Dalton has bypassed CMS’ Board of Education and is pressing North Carolina’s Attorney General Josh Stein and Governor Roy Cooper for change.

“What are we doing?” she asked. When kids are dying, the curriculum needs an update.

Up to four parents call her every week looking for guidance after losing a child or learning about their drug abuse.

“We need to all stand together, stand strong and be loud to our lawmakers and decision makers,” she said. “If you’re just in the background, that’s detrimental to the end result that we all want.”

Laird’s parents were plucked from the back with the paramedics’ call earlier this month.

“It’s a club neither one of us ever wanted to be a part of,” his dad said. “It’s one we never thought we would be a part of.”

‘One pill can kill’

This past weekend, a parade of purple filled Raymer-Kepner Funeral Home as Laird’s Celebration of Life commenced in Huntersville. Outside in the parking lot, kids hugged each other next cars still sporting “student driver” bumper stickers.

Inside, more than 100 people — teachers, teammates, friends and some who’d never met Laird — dressed in his favorite color and sardined into the chapel’s pews. With every seat filled, some were forced to stand along its walls.

Laird’s wrestling coach recalled the lanky freshman who walked up to the mat with a beanie on two years ago. His girlfriend remembered how he always knew someone anywhere they went. He was like a celebrity, she said.

His younger sister remembered his countless attempts to get her to sneak him popcorn when he was a boy with braces. She’s been sleeping in his bed, wearing his clothes, still waiting for him to waltz in and kick her out.

Everyone who spoke remembered the skateboarder’s trademark shrug and smile.

Ramirez, during his eulogy, remembered his son’s uncanny ability to sense pain and hurt in others and to see beauty and potential in all.

His mother remembered everything, from when he was born to the last “I love you” he said over the phone June 30 — the day before he died.

She asked the packed chapel to remember one thing in her son’s memory.

“One pill can kill.”