For Belmont student, struggles end in death
Teen caught in web of drug addiction and dealers, friend says
Dorrian Wright, the 16-year-old Belmont Secondary School student who died of a drug overdose on the weekend, had struggled with addiction since he was 14 and was mixed up with friends who were dealing drugs, his best friend told the Times Colonist.
“We all love Dorrian very much. He was like a brother to me,” said 15-year-old Kurtis Newell, who had known Dorrian for four years, two of which were spent living together in the same foster home. Both friends struggle with addiction.
“I’m just getting out of the drug s--- myself. Just to have this all happen, it’s just an eye-opener for everyone,” Kurtis said.
Dorrian, a Grade 10 student, would use Xanax and codeine as party drugs, but Kurtis said he thinks his friend only recently tried heroin.
Dorrian was with other teens at a home on Goldstream Avenue on Saturday and into Sunday when he overdosed.
Kurtis wasn’t there but said a friend who was, woke up the next morning to find Dorrian unresponsive. “They were partying, doing drugs. They went to sleep and Dorrian didn’t wake up.”
Kurtis believes if he had been at the house that night, Dorrian would still be alive. “I would have made sure Dorrian never touched that s---. And if [the overdose] did happen, I would have ran over to my house and got my Narcan kit.”
Kurtis broke the news of the death to Dorrian’s mother and foster mother. He said Dorrian loved to be active and spend time outdoors. “He was one of those kids where we were always out in the forest, always out biking, just being kids, right?”
This is the second friend Kurtis has lost to an overdose in the past year.
Kurtis hopes Dorrian’s death will raise awareness about the fatal consequences of fentanyl, which continues to kill people in record numbers. “People need to know, this isn’t fun. Drugs are not fun, they’re dangerous. They get people in jail, they get people in trouble, they kill you,” he said. “People need to know it’s not safe.”
The B.C. Coroners Service has not confirmed the cause of death, but said its office is investigating after a teen was found dead on Sunday.
Additional counsellors and staff have been assigned to Belmont Secondary to help students.
Sooke school district superintendent Jim Cambridge expressed condolences to the family and said everyone in the district is dealing with the loss.
“Staff is taking this very hard,” Cambridge said. “This is June. This is a time that we celebrate. We have athletic awards. We have a band concert at Belmont tonight. We have graduation ceremonies on Sunday.
“This is a special week, usually, so you can imagine that all the people who support the kids at school are hugely impacted — the principal, vice-principals, the counsellors, the teaching staff and all of the friends.”
School officials sent information to all parents of high school and middle school students on Thursday, offering tips on how to speak to their children about substance use.
“We know that the risk nowadays is significantly different than it has been in the past,” Cambridge said. “We, as the adults in the community, need to make sure that our children are protected. And the way we can protect them is by having some honest conversations with them.”
The materials and links to other resources from Health Canada and Island Health are posted on the district’s website at sd62.bc.ca.
In April, Elliot Eurchuk, a 16-year-old student at Oak Bay High School, died of an accidental overdose. His parents, Rachel Staples and Brock Eurchuk, said the health-care system excluded them from having a say over their son’s painkiller prescriptions, leading him to street drugs.
Cambridge said in his career he has never seen such a spate of drug overdoses among teens.
“I see this as very concerning,” he said. “I think that perhaps we, as parents and students, don’t understand the real risks that are out there right now with the potency of the drugs that are available. I’m very concerned that children are making choices that they shouldn’t be making when you’re 15, 16 and 17 years old.”
Cambridge said people are even more vigilant now in light of graduation celebrations.
“If there’s kids that we were concerned about in the past, people are touching base with them,” he said. “Adults are making that connection. A healthy connection with an adult is the best thing that can happen for a kid. If they feel that they can trust someone, if they can have a conversation about something they’re thinking of trying or worried about or feeling pressure into doing, that healthy connection can perhaps prevent that.”
Illicit-drug overdoses continue to kill an average of four people a day in B.C., sparing no one from teenagers to senior citizens.
The B.C. Coroners Service released its latest statistics Thursday showing that 511 people — including six youth under the age of 19 — died in the first four months of this year.
There were 124 deaths in April, a 23 per cent decrease from March when 160 people died — the second highest monthly tally on record.
“We’re cautiously optimistic about the fact that we’re back down in the 120s,” said Andy Watson, the service’s manager of strategic communications.
“But that still is obviously four deaths per day in our province and that’s four deaths too many.”
Victoria had the third highest number of overdose deaths among cities with 39 to the end of April. Vancouver had 135 and Surrey 80.
Watson said four of every five victims is a male and seven of every 10 involves someone in the 19 to 49 age group.
The vast majority of overdoses occur indoors, mostly in private residences.
Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opiate, was detected in 83 per cent of the cases and remains the likely explanation for the epidemic. “Obviously there still is a toxic drug supply out there,” Watson said.
The rate of overdose deaths on the South Island remains a concern. There were 37.6 deaths per 100,000 people to the end of April, a significant jump from last year’s rate of 26.6 per 100,000.