Fentanyl likely caused friends’ tragic deaths
Aaron Hall, his best friend Jamez Manning and another man had been partying through the night. It was less than a week to Christmas and the young men had a sprawling network of friends to visit at events around Oakland.
When they were back in their apartment in West Oakland in the early morning hours of Dec. 20, someone busted out what they all believed was cocaine and tragedy struck, Hall’s mother said.
What they didn’t know is the line of powder they snorted likely contained fentanyl, a powerful narcotic that’s 40 times stronger than heroin and is the culprit in a skyrocketing number of recent deaths around the Bay Area and country.
“Aaron didn’t know what it was,” Hall’s mother, Debra Johnson Hall, said in an interview. “They had been drinking and he had been partying and his guard was down.”
By the time paramedics got to the apartment on
the 1400 block of Third Avenue around 7 a.m., Hall and Manning, both 30, were dead. The third friend, who authorities did not identify, was hospitalized and survived. He explained what happened to Hall’s mother.
The tragic deaths are just one example of the region’s spreading fentanyl epidemic — a forceful killer due to the drug’s potency and high chances of overdose. Some who use the drug specifically seek it out, while others — like Hall and Manning — become victims by accident.
The Oakland Police Department and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration are investigating the deaths and working to track the source of the drugs, officials said. Autopsy results are still pending and officials have not confirmed the causes of death.
Hall was immensely popular as a former star basketball player at Lincoln High School in San Francisco, a talented skateboarder and an enterprising musician with a group called Hypedout. His songs — which borrow from hiphop, funk, reggae and other influences — have accompanying music videos on YouTube and other social media.
Hall worked as a special education and preschool teacher during the day. On weekend nights, he played music and often attended parties, where he occasionally drank alcohol and smoked marijuana, but avoided hard drugs, his mother said.
“Everybody adored Aaron,” she said. “He was confident. He was adventurous. He was a talented musician and he was such a loving person. He brought all kinds of people together.”
Manning, Hall’s friend, roommate and fellow musician, had similarly magnetic personality and loved to travel. Originally from Bay Point, his family is part of the local faith community.
“Mez was the life of our family, a world traveler, a free spirit, a peace keeper and he enjoyed life with an opulent sense of optimism,” the family wrote in a statement after his death. “He was the best of us with his magnetic personality. He is greatly missed.”
While overdose deaths primarily ravage people in the throes of addiction, fentanyl has also been showing up in other substances such as counterfeit medication, or can be mistaken for another drug, claiming victims who may not know they’re risking their lives, experts said.
For decades the main opiate on the streets in the Bay Area and western half of the country was easily recognizable black tar heroin that came up from Mexico. Fentanyl, however, has recently flooded into the region’s black market.
“An opiate being sold as a white powder is novel out here,” said Dr. Phillip Coffin, the director of substance use research for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “I think that’s part of the issue with mistaken fentanyl overdose deaths.”
Opioid users generally know what they’re using, and some carry Naloxone, a drug that can counter the effects of opioid overdose. People who mistakenly ingest fentanyl may be unprepared, he said.
San Francisco has been hit particularly hard by the fentanyl epidemic. Last year, overdose deaths from the drug shot up to 89, a nearly 150% increase from the previous year, according to data from the city’s Public Health Department.
Three highprofile deaths that year came when three men overdosed in the HaightAshbury neighborhood after smoking methamphetamine that was unknowingly laced with fentanyl.
Alameda County has been struggling with its own scourge of opiaterelated deaths this year. There were 51 deaths in the county through Dec. 16, a number that will grow as more deaths are registered with the state, according to Neetu Balram, a spokeswoman for the county Public Health Department.
The department does not track shortterm numbers, so it’s not immediately clear if a batch of bad drugs is circulating on the streets around where Hall and Manning died, officials said.
But paramedics in Oakland have responded to a growing number of ambulance calls for overdoses in the last three months, including one call for the deaths of Hall and Manning. That was just one of 241 ambulance calls to 911 between Oct. 1 and Friday Dec. 20 reporting possible overdoses, according to dispatch data provided by the Oakland Fire Department.
Mike Sena helps neighboring public safety agencies track overdose clusters and other trends as the executive director of the Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a regional branch of a national DEA program.
Participating agencies submit reports to a mapping program that provides realtime suspected overdose data across jurisdictions.
He said he’s seen a rash of incidents similar to the one described by Hall’s mother.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ve got fentanyllaced pills and other items that are pretty much prevalent throughout the Bay Area,” he said.
While the mapping program tracks some overdoses, Sena said it’s difficult to quantify the problem due to often slow and inconsistent reporting.
As public safety and public health officials struggle to track the size and scope of the fentanyl trouble in the Bay Area, Hall’s mother is making plans to honor her son.
Shortly after his death, his friends held a candlelight vigil near his home. Debra Johnson Hall said she’s working to organize an event at one of the clubs where her son’s band used to play.
“My son lived a good life. He lived a really good life,” she said. “I can say he lived more in his 30 years than a person my age with all the people he touched and all the people who loved him.”
A friend recently organized an online fundraiser to raise money for Hall and Manning’s funeral costs.