16-year-old dies after taking Percocet laced with fentanyl
PLANO (CBSNewsTexas.com) – A Plano family's nightmare sheds more disturbing light on the deadly toll fentanyl is taking on children.
A high school cheerleader has died after taking what she thought was a pain pill but was actually laced with fentanyl.
Her parents believe more awareness could have saved her life.
Stephanie Vaughn talks about finding her 16-year-old daughter Sienna unconscious in her bedroom last month, wondering how a fun family weekend could instantly become the worst day of her life.
"[I] knocked on the door. She didn't answer. I opened up the door and that's when I saw Sienna and her friend laying on the bed and her friend was making some gurgling noises," she said. "Sienna was super pale and her lips were turning purplish."
"I was praying, this can't be happening, this is a good kid, we don't deserve this...what is going on," she continued.
Sienna was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Her friend survived after the Plano Senior High School students ingested a pill they thought was the drug Percocet.
"And they asked us if we wanted to go see her and of course we did," Vaughn said. "And she was still hooked up to tubes. And she was sleeping. She was so beautiful. And I was like, this can't be happening. This can't be happening."
When Plano police arrived at the hospital, the Vaughn's say it didn't take long for them to suspect the cause of Sienna's death.
"They said 'I wonder...we've been seeing a lot of Percocet laced fentanyl overdoses come in,'" Stephanie said.
That upset Sienna's parents, who say if authorities and hospitals were aware of a string of fentanyl poisonings from Percocet pills being passed around in Plano, the public should have been immediately notified.
"So we're angry that she had to be the one to pay the price," said Sienna's father, Ryan Vaughn. "And we're angry that we as parents didn't know that these fentanyl laced Percocets were going around the school."
"If there is fentanyl laced pills going around under the name of Percocet and they're seeing accidental overdoses coming in..they need to be telling us ASAP," Stephanie said.
That frustration only makes the lingering grief worse over the loss of beloved cheerleader, Girl Scout and music lover who has become the latest child to be taken away by a deadly poison.