Friends and family are mourning a 17-year-old Victoria girl who died four days before Christmas from a suspected fentanyl overdose.
Family members could not be reached Monday, but Beth Klimek was identified on social media as the girl who died.
“In the early hours of the winter solstice, Kami’s baby, Beth Klimek, slipped away at the age of 17,” Shane Walters wrote in a Facebook post.
“I didn’t know Beth very well but I did know that she could play some musical instruments and was an honour student before she got led astray these past 6 months or so. I knew she was sweet, loved blowing bubbles, swimming, and laughing. She was named for the nurse who helped deliver her in 1999,” the post said.
The family learned of Klimek’s death from a police officer who knocked on her grandmother’s door at 4 a.m.
“We strode arcades of anguish all day yesterday as the radio played lunatic commercial songs of Christmas cheer,” Walters wrote. “I think about all that I have seen, done, felt, and realized between when I was 17 and now, at 53. Beth will never have those years.”
The B.C. Coroners Service is investigating the death. Spokeswoman Barb McLintock confirmed that a drug overdose is one possibility, but said it has not been confirmed.
“My cousin lost her granddaughter to fentanyl yesterday. Her heart is shattered,” Kat Barnard wrote on Facebook.
“If your child or someone close to you is using, find the courage to confront them. Ask them to read this grieving grandmother’s letter to a child taken from her and those who loved her,” Barnard wrote, before posting a text that included the following, attributed to Diane Larose Klimek:
“She will never come back, I will never see her smile again, she will never hug me again, I will never hear, ‘I love you gramma’ or ‘I hate you gramma’ … I’m thinking about all the times we spent at rock festivals, haunting thrift stores looking for treasures, talked about everything that was going on and fought about the negative things like the drugs she was taking and how I still thought I could somehow convince her to get help for,” the post said.
“I’d give anything to have her hating me just so she’d still be here and that would give me another chance to try and get her off all the drugs she was doing. … Whatever she thought she was taking, it was laced with Death.”
There were 755 apparent illicit drug overdoses in B.C. between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30, according to the coroners service, an increase of more than 70 per cent over the same period last year. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has been linked to more than 60 per cent of all illicit drug deaths to the end of October.
Last month saw 128 overdose deaths, or an average of more than four a day. Thirteen people died from overdoses in one day in Vancouver last week.
Greater Victoria has also been hard hit, recording 60 overdose deaths so far this year, trailing only Vancouver at 164 and Surrey at 92. Nanaimo has had 25 deaths.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority has the highest drug overdose rate among health regions with 19.7 deaths per 100,000 people from January to November — an increase of 153 per cent over last year.
Fentanyl is in everything, said Our Place Society spokesman Grant McKenzie.
“You really can’t trust ecstasy, cocaine, crystal meth — any of that stuff,” he said. “There’s no longer a safe way for kids to experiment. Your first time could be your last time.”
— With files from Louise Dickson
