Kasich aide Ryan Dupain died from overdose
They now know the what of Ryan Dupain’s death. But they might never know the why.
The former top advance man for Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign died June 4 from an overdose of cocaine and fentanyl, the Franklin County coroner determined last week.
That’s the what. The why is how this 23-year-old, newly engaged former star athlete could hear Kasich’s anti-drug message innumerable times, but still use drugs and overdose after a party.
He and his fiancée, Rachel Neil, planned to marry one week from today. In fact, the countdown clock to the wedding is still eerily running at the couple’s website.
Franklin County Coroner Anahi Ortiz said an autopsy cannot determine whether Dupain took the drugs separately or whether fentanyl was, perhaps without Dupain’s knowledge, laced into the cocaine. She said Dupain’s blood-alcohol level was 0.08 percent — the threshold at which a motorist in Ohio is considered to be driving drunk.
But it wasn’t an amount of alcohol that would have caused Dupain harm while at his German Village home.
Kasich and others close to Dupain declined comment about his death.
But his father evidently was well aware of what happened, judging from his Facebook posts.
A couple of days after his son’s death, Rob Dupain shared a news story entitled, “While the rest of the nation is gripped in the throes of a heroin problem, Ohio has moved on to darker and more powerful drugs.”
His take: “It only takes one time. Don’t do it even once. Their evil greed and your one bad choice ... ruins lives.”
Rob Dupain also posted a story about Montgomery County becoming “Overdose Capital of America,” saying, “A sad, ugly, evil, sadistic world that we live in, where we all try to find some level of sense and normalcy.”
And his retort to a Pittsburgh TV story about drug dealers lacing their product with deadly fentanyl was to call them murderers.
DuPain’s death came eight days after his 23rd birthday, exactly three weeks after the death of his mother on Mother’s Day, shortly after he had landed a state job and less than two months after his engagement to Neil.
He had been a football and track star at his high school in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, and was awarded a scholarship to Capital University, where he played football.
In a heart-wrenching 911 call on June 4, a nearhysterical Neil tells the dispatcher that she woke up to find Dupain cold, stiff and not breathing with blood coming out of his mouth. “I can’t get him to wake up,” she says.
Social-media posts show that family and friends are keeping DuPain’s memory alive. A gofundme campaign quickly raised more than $18,000 for funeral and other expenses, with contributions by many from the Kasich team. And his father is gathering friends and family for a “Ryan’s Peeps” outing to Pittsburgh for a Pirates game next month.