‘IT’S A TRAVESTY’
Families of fentanyl victims believe police aren’t acting on dealer data from text messages
In the early hours of March 7, 2016, Brandon Jansen typed one last text message before he died.
“Jus(t) met him,” reads a message he sent at 2:12 a.m. to a fellow patient at the Sunshine Coast Treatment Centre, where he was seeking treatment for an opioid addiction.
Half an hour later, Jansen slipped into the abyss of fentanyl overdose, his breath slowing until all the life had drained from his 20-year-old body.
A coroners inquest beginning Jan. 16 will shed light on the events leading up to Jansen’s final and fatal hit. But his mother, Michelle, lives in angst not knowing whether the dealer that sold it to him is behind bars.
Information contained within Brandon’s cellphone provides a detailed history of his drug purchases, she said. Text message screenshots she sent to Postmedia show the date and time of the transaction that preceded his death.
Michelle Jansen said other messages identify the people who sold her son drugs.
But 10 months later, Mounties won’t update her on their investigation into her son’s death, even after she made dozens of calls, she said.
“The police should be communicating with me, considering I am his mother ... they full well know who brought the drugs and nothing’s being done about it,” she said.
Jansen believes the dealer may still be selling fentanyl, despite investigators holding potentially damning digital evidence.
“It makes me turn inside,” she said. “He killed my son. And for nothing to be done about it? It’s a travesty, it’s wrong. And it’s just going to continue to happen. I mean, look at how many people have now died.”
In the first 11 months of 2016, illicit-drug overdoses killed 755 people, according to the B.C. Coroners Service. The toxic opioid fentanyl was detected in an estimated 60 per cent of those deaths. B.C. police have announced large busts of drug operations and seizures of fentanyl as the result of months-long joint-forces operations.
Yet families across B.C. told Postmedia they feel justice hasn’t been adequately served against the dealers who sold fentanyl to their loved ones, particularly after they provided police with digital evidence.
Sandra Tully lost her son Ryan Pinneo, 22, to a fentanyl overdose in Kamloops. After repeated attempts to detox, on Jan. 20, Pinneo was found slumped over on a chair in his bedroom with 3½ counterfeit OxyContin 80 pills sitting nearby.
Tully said her son’s phone went missing before his death but in the days that followed, community members began to point fingers and name people suspected of tricking him into buying pills made with fentanyl.
Tully said she and her husband tried to forward these names to police but stopped calling because they never responded.
“You’re grieving anyhow and you just don’t have the energy to chase them down,” she said.
“It’s almost what we’re holding on to — that somebody, somewhere, down the road, will be held accountable for the death of our child. Because the end game here is none of them were buying fentanyl.”
Helen Jennens lost her son Tyler Leinweber, 40, to a fentanyl overdose on Jan. 14, 2016. After becoming addicted to OxyContin following an injury, the Kelowna father began using heroin. He had been attending drug counselling when a dealer sold him fentanyl passed off as heroin.
Leinweber’s cellphone was plugged in and charging where his body was found.
“I brought it home with me and I started going through the texts and you could see when he connected with the dealer,” Jennens said.
When Jennens brought her son’s phone to police, they showed little interest in following up on the names she’d found scrolling through the phone, she said. Eventually, she learned the dealer was up on other charges.
B.C. RCMP Cpl. Janelle Shoihet said in an emailed statement that police recognize that families are being dramatically impacted by the opiod crisis. She said it is difficult for the force to make general comments about specific investigations but spoke to some of the challenges police may face.
“In some instances, there may be evidentiary information available on a deceased person’s cellphone. However, we must also recognize that a person’s right to privacy does not end upon their death,” she said.
“In order to obtain the evidence which may be stored on a person’s cellphone, judicial authorization would be required.”
Neil Boyd, a professor in the Department of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, said it’s understandable that police carefully guard information about ongoing investigations, during which they may be trying to trace the cellphone communications to the street-level dealer’s superiors.
“I’m reluctant to be critical of the police in this circumstance,” Boyd said. “Obviously they took the cellphones and I would assume they’re interested in what’s in those phones and the connections to the dealers, because everybody has the same goal of trying to get fentanyl off the street, given the risk that it imposes.”
Boyd said he believes police are focused on stymying the flow of fentanyl at higher levels.
And while he understands the frustration that has led to criticism of these investigations, he said its prudent they are conducted without police disclosing particulars.
“They have to be fairly guarded about what they tell the public,” Boyd said.