SELMA, Texas – Although the Selma Police Department is still awaiting the toxicology results from the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, Veronica Kaprosy is warning other parents as she suspects her 17-year-old daughter, Danica, died of a fentanyl overdose.
“You have to talk to your children about the what ifs,” Kaprosy said. “Be more involved. Don’t give them that privacy.”
Kaprosy said she found Danica last July in her bedroom, just over a month after her birthday. The teen was lying face down, unresponsive, on her bed.
“I screamed for my husband, and we called 911,” Kaprosy said. “We started to do CPR ‘til they got here, and, no, nothing.”
She said the first responders told them, “She had been gone for several hours.”
Kaprosy said they were at a loss as to what may have happened until she found a photo on her daughter’s phone of some pills.
She said Danica’s aunt recognized them from those she’d seen on television as pills that could be laced with the dangerous opioid fentanyl.
Kaprosy said the pills are promoted on social media and in rap songs.
She urges other parents, “Talk to your children. Bring it up. Show them pictures. Show them this is not good. It’s not right.”
Because other drugs like Percocet or Xanax can be laced with small, lethal doses of fentanyl, Kaprosy said, “You don’t even know you’re taking it.”
But as to whether her daughter had ever used them despite her warnings, Kaprosy said, “Not that I’m aware.”
She said nothing seemed unusual the night her daughter died.
Danica had taken the cheeseburger and chicken nuggets her parents had brought her into her bedroom, where she normally ate while listening to music.
She said her daughter had been working as a hostess at a popular Mexican restaurant in Schertz, earning her own money for the first time.
“She paid for a phone. She paid for her own things, starting to be an adult,” Kaprosy said.
But, she said, it’s possible Danica also paid for the pills she may have taken.
Kaprosy and her sister, Valerie Hoyt, said they’re well aware of the three teenagers in Hays County who died of fentanyl overdoses.
“It’s out there, very close to home,” Hoyt said. “We didn’t expect it to be in our home.”
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