GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Among the tens of thousands of lives claimed by fentanyl nationwide each year, many did not know they were taking the deadly opioid.
That includes Amanda Nickelson, a 39-year-old Manistee woman who is remembered by her family as a devoted mother with a great sense of humor. Nickelson, who had moved to Grand Rapids, died last year after unknowingly taking fentanyl. It left his family in pieces and the alleged drug dealer facing life in prison.
Her younger sister, Shanna Nickelson, keeps a piece of her everywhere she goes. She wears a necklace containing her ashes and the ring she wore when she died. Her arm is tattooed with the name Amanda Nickelson.
Shanna Nickelson said her family has been broken since the loss.
“My dad, he’s not the type of man to cry,” Shanna Nickelson said. “All he does is cry. We no longer celebrate the holidays with the family because she is not there. My mother doesn’t talk about it. If she talks about it, she cries.
Doris Nickelson, Amanda’s mother, said she had an infectious smile that lit up a room and was a good mother to her own daughter.
She was also an organ and tissue donor.
Like so many others in West Michigan and across the country, Amanda Nickelson was trapped by drug addiction. But for a long time, her sister said, she stayed clean and took care of herself. She was his rock.
“She was a very good sister,” Shanna Nickelson said.
Amanda Nickelson suffered from depression and anxiety and didn’t get the care she needed, which led her to use drugs, her mother said.
“I know people will know she fell in a hole,” Doris Nickelson told News 8 in a phone call Wednesday evening. “She was addicted, but she wasn’t always like that.”
In February 2023, Amanda Nickelson purchased heroin from Edreek Tornes of Muskegon, according to court records. The drug was laced with fentanyl, police said.
Nickelson then overdosed at his home on McReynolds Avenue NW in Grand Rapids. Her family says their own daughter, just 4 years old at the time, found her passed out in her bathroom.
“It was pretty traumatic,” Shanna Nickelson said. “I got a call on Valentine’s Day that she had overdosed and was in the hospital.”
She was in critical condition but showed signs of improvement afterward.
“I left that night, I thought she was going to be okay,” Shanna Nickelson said. “And then I got a call that evening saying she was completely brain dead and there was nothing more they could do.”
A toxicology report confirmed she died of a fentanyl overdose, according to court records.
“I pretty much closed myself off from everyone,” Shanna Nickelson said. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just stayed alone. »
An undercover agent, using Amanda Nickelson’s phone, then set up a drug deal with Tornes. As officers arrested him, a field drug test confirmed his heroin also tested positive for fentanyl.
Tornes was later charged with delivery of a controlled substance causing death, a felony punishable by up to life in prison. The case has not yet been judged. His attorney, a public defender, did not respond to News 8’s email seeking comment.
“I hope he has life,” Shanna Nickelson said. “I mean, our family is struggling. It is our family who must fight to overcome this ordeal. I hope he has life. He took my sister’s.
Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker said criminal charges against Tornes, punishable by up to life in prison, were rare. It’s just one of two lawsuits filed by his office so far this year. Nothing happened last year.
Becker said law enforcement is taking an increasingly active role in investigating these cases, but they can be difficult to prove.
“It’s basically a homicide,” Becker said. “It’s a lifelong offence. You have to be able to prove it and prove that it caused the death.
Becker’s office often charges suspects with a lesser crime, delivery of a controlled substance, for up to 15 years. Unlike the Tornes case, Becker says it can be difficult to review phone records and link a drug to a specific dealer.
“It’s behind closed doors and the police don’t see it and you don’t have any witnesses,” Becker said. “It’s a circumstantial case that you’re building.”
THE Kent County Health Department says overdose deaths have decreased slightly in recent reports. There have been 108 overdose deaths in 2022, which drops to 93 in 2023.
But a national study conducted last year by the University of California, Los Angeles found that overdose deaths from fentanyl-containing stimulants have increased 50-fold since 2010. Just 235 deaths in 2010 have skyrocketed to more than 34,000 deaths in 2021.
Fentanyl continues to cause a national opioid crisis, with nearly 108,000 overdose deaths last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last August, A man was sentenced to several years in prison for giving his friend cocaine laced with fentanyl. Christopher Kramer, a 21-year-old from Kent County, died after ingesting the opioid.
Richard Pazder leads the Michigan State Police Southwest Enforcement Team, which focuses on catching drug dealers who put deadly drugs on our streets.
“Sometimes people think they’re paying, they’re buying heroin or something that’s not as deadly,” Pazder said. “When in fact, most of what is called heroin on the street is actually fentanyl, which is highly deadly and very dangerous to our citizens.”
Pazder’s team notes that fentanyl is present in many medications.
“Sometimes it’s even possible for someone who thinks they’re buying a completely different drug, like cocaine and methamphetamine, in some cases there have been cases where those drugs have also been mixed with fentanyl,” he said. Pazder said.
Shanna Nickelson doesn’t plan to miss a minute of the legal proceedings against the man accused in Amanda Nickelson’s death.
“I want to know what the outcome will be and I want to be there for her,” she said. “I think she deserves justice.”
Doris Nickelson said she won’t get real justice for her daughter until the drug maker is prosecuted.
“It outrages me that people are willing to invest anything in this sort of thing to make an almighty dollar,” she said. “There are too many people dying. »
THE national drug helpline can be contacted at any time at 1.800.662.HELP (4357).