Thirteen-year-old boy among three young people killed by fentanyl overdose within 2 hours in Texas city

A 13-year-old boy was among three young people reported dead from fentanyl overdose in the same Texas city in the span of just 28 hours.

The fentanyl crisis in Wichita Falls, a city two hours away from Dallas, took the lives of the boy and two young adults over the weekend. One of the victims was Adam Daniel Sattler, a 21-year-old student at Midwestern State University, CBS reported.

According to a statement from the Wichita Falls Police Department, officers arrived at an apartment at the Mustang Village Apartments located around 10.40am on Sunday to do a welfare check on Mr Sattler. He was found deceased inside the apartment.

About an hour after responding to Mr Sattler’s death, police found a 13-year-old teen dead from a suspected fentanyl overdose inside an apartment building on Tower Drive.

And just a day earlier, 19-year-old Alize Mariah Anita Martinez was pronounced dead at her home on Grant Gill Lane shortly after 7am on Saturday, local news station CW39 reported. Her mother said in a Facebook post that Ms Martinez recovered from her fentanyl addiction over the summer but had recently relapsed.

In the emotional post, Silvia Martinez said she did not want her daughter’s death to be in vain, adding that she was determined to raise awareness about the nationwide fentanyl epidemic in the US.

“My daughter was bright, young and ambitious. But she had her faults and demons like most. She tried what she tought was a Percocet or Perc, not knowing it contained fentanyl,” the post reads.

“One time, her first time and she was addicted, I helped her become clear over the summer, but she succumbed to her impulses.”

The family has created a GoFundMe page to cover funeral costs. More than $4,500 have been raised out of the $15,000 goal.

In Texas, almost 1,700 fentanyl-related deaths were reported just in 2021, compared to 100,000 deaths nationwide between April 2020 and April 2021, CDC data shows. Last year, Governor Greg Abbot signed a law to increase penalties for making or distributing the lethal drug.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and only 2 milligrams of the synthetic opioId could be lethal. Analysis from the agency has determined 42 per cent of pills tested for fentanyl contained at least 2 milligrams.