Toronto widow speaks out after husband overdoses on cocaine possibly laced with fentanyl

A Toronto widow is speaking out after the untimely death of her 25-year-old husband from a fatal overdose she suspects was caused by fentanyl or carfentanil-laced cocaine.

“He was 25 years old, really full of life. The sort of person who walks into a room and everybody knows him — always laughing and dancing and singing and being ridiculous,” Jody McLennan said of her late husband Oghenovo “Novo” Avwunufe whom she wed in August 2016.

“He was just fun to be around. We liked hanging out with each other — no matter what we were doing we had a good time doing it.”

READ MORE: Ontario to track opioid overdoses on weekly basis for first time after spike in deaths

The couple had been married just six months when on Feb. 11, Jody awoke to find her husband unresponsive after a night out with friends.

“He was sitting in his chair and I was on the couch and everything seemed normal,” she said. “And when I shook him awake, he wasn’t alive anymore.”

As McLennan struggles to come to terms with Novo’s “sudden and unexpected” death, she said she suspects the deadly opioid fentanyl — or the 100 times more toxic opioid carfentanil — is responsible for his death and is warning the public of the potential danger of using recreational drugs.

READ MORE: Toronto police warn public after man dies of suspected fentanyl-laced heroin overdose

“I’m pretty convinced it was fentanyl or carfentanil, because a 25-year-old who’s healthy and has no sickness, no trauma to their organs in an autopsy — doesn’t just magically die,” she said.

“And the fact that he had taken cocaine the night before, and this is such a prevalent problem, it just seems very likely the suspect.”

McLennan said an acquaintance had done the drug with her husband the night before his death and he seemed as though he was “fine” at the end of the night.

“Then he went to sleep and never woke up,” she said. “It was just so strange, like the last thing you’d expect to happen overnight.”

McLennan said doctors, paramedics and police indicated to her that a powerful opioid could be the cause of the overdose — but it could be months before she has answers due to the time it takes for the coroner’s office to test the drug samples and conduct an autopsy.

“But they don’t test for carfentanil. So, we don’t really even get any answers anyways,” she said. “If it comes back negative it doesn’t really mean negative, it just means we’ll never find out.”

Starting April 1, the Ontario health ministry will mandate all hospitals with emergency departments to begin tracking opioid overdoses in the province on a weekly basis for the first time in an effort to gain a near real-time look at the growing crisis.

In 2010, there were 421 fatal opioid overdoses in Ontario, with 93 of those due to a combination of opioids and alcohol.

READ MORE: A province-by-province look at opioid-overdose stats, including fentanyl

That number rose dramatically to 551 with 159 deaths related to alcohol and opioids in 2015, according to the latest available preliminary data from the Chief Coroner for Ontario’s office released Tuesday. Eighty six of those deaths were caused by fentanyl in 2010, with five related to alcohol, which almost doubled to 167 in 2015 and 37 related to alcohol.

In total, 710 Ontarians are believed to have died from opioid-related deaths in 2015 — the latest available data on the issue in the province.

Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Toronto’s acting medical officer of health said in January the most current statistics show there were 253 drug overdoses in Toronto in 2015. That number was comparable to the previous year, but Yaffe said the rate of fentanyl-related drug overdoses had almost doubled from 23 to 42, signalling a growing problem in the city.

In October, Global News obtained data from Health Canada that showed fentanyl was found in 2,503 drug samples submitted by Canadian law enforcement agencies so far in 2016 — a 43 per cent increase from the 1,749 drug samples submitted in all of 2015.

READ MORE: Experts sound alarm after 40% increase of fentanyl-laced street drugs tested in Canada

Toronto police suspected the presence of carfentanil in street drugs seized in the city for the first time during an undercover drug raid in October, which was later confirmed by Health Canada in December.

Police seized more than three kilograms of fentanyl in Toronto last year — a 750 per cent increase over 2015 — and paramedics used more naloxone last year than in the two years prior combined.

Toronto Police Det.-Const. Graham Atkinson with the Toronto Drug Squad said the danger with cutting street drugs with powerful opioids such as fentanyl and carfentanil is that there are no safeguards in place.

READ MORE: Fentanyl: For some a lifesaver, for others a killer

“When it’s not done precisely, that’s where we run into trouble,” he said, adding that most recreational drug users would have no idea their drugs were cut with something stronger.

“I would say in most cases, they don’t know they’re taking it. I would say the majority that overdose didn’t know that their drug of choice contained it.”

Atkinson said habitual users who have built up a tolerance and a somewhat reliable supply of their drug of choice might not be in as much danger as someone who occasionally uses recreational drugs.

“You’ve got to remember, the dealers are there to make money. That’s their sole purpose,” he said.

“Your street drugs — your heroin, your coke, your meth — it’s purely profit-based. So, if your dealers can make more profit like any other industry they’re going to do it.”

READ MORE: Ontario street drugs test positive for carfentanil for 1st time: Health Canada

McLennan said she’s speaking it to raise awareness so that more people who use recreational drugs such as cocaine in a social setting, will be aware of the danger they’re in.

“I think there needs to be more education for everyday use because we all know it’s dangerous to use something in excess, or to mix it with another drug. But if you just do a tiny bit of something that’s always been safe for you before and all of a sudden it kills you, that’s not normal,” she said.

“It’s really hard to detect I’ve heard because it’s not always evenly dispersed in the drug that you’re agreeing to take. So one part of that bag might be fine, another part might have a huge dose that will kill you.”

READ MORE: Toronto hopes to learn from Vancouver in fight against growing fentanyl crisis

Coun. Joe Cressy (Ward 20) said Toronto is facing a “growing overdose crisis” that has spread across the country.

“The number has been going up every year for 10 years — but in recent days it’s escalating rapidly and it’s escalating because of the arrival of fentanyl, which is an extremely potent and deadly and fatal substance that is effecting a wide swath of drug types,” he said Monday.

“Whether you’re a recreational, occasional or habitual drug user — nobody needs to die from overdose because these deaths are preventable. That’s the bottom line, is that we can prevent the unnecessary loss of life if we do more.”

“One death is too many. If you use drugs once a week or everyday, you shouldn’t die of an overdose. Those deaths should be stopped.”

READ MORE: Ontario expands use of Suboxone to battle growing opioid crisis

Toronto Public Health’s Toronto Overdose Action Plan passed at the Board of Health on March 20, which also called for more widespread availability of naloxone kits, the lifesaving overdose antidote medication and for the exploring of the use of treatments such as prescription heroin in the future.

In January, the provincial health ministry also committed to funding three supervised safe injection sites in Toronto in an effort to do more to tackle the opioid crisis at a community level.

“There are those who use drugs and we need to ensure we keep them alive, but we also need to make sure that we have the treatment options available so that when they’re ready to move off drugs we can provide those services,” Cressy said. “Right now, treatment is over capacity.”

READ MORE: Ontario commits to funding 3 supervised safe injection sites in Toronto

Despite the tragic circumstances of her husband’s death, McLennan said she wants him to be remembered not as someone who did drugs on occasion — but as an “awesome person who touched a lot of people’s lives.”

“Something horrible, a horrible accident happened to him and that’s not a reflection of who he was,” she said.

“It’s not a bad thing that somebody dabbles in drugs here and there but we all need to be more careful because the government isn’t exposing it as much as they need to be and they’re not protecting us enough right now. So we need to take the initiative to protect each other.”