Family says York woman received ‘death sentence’ in potent opioid pill

When Wanda and Doug Smail brought home the ashes of their youngest daughter after her drug overdose death in York County, they found a stark reminder of their grief on the front step – the bridesmaid dress she’ll never wear in her sister’s wedding.

Their daughter Anna Smail, 21, and her boyfriend, Austin, moved to York from Colorado in February, when Austin’s grandmother became ill and later died.

About three months later, Anna was dead after overdosing on the deadly opioid carfentanil.

Carfentanil is an extremely potent synthetic opioid. Marvin Brown, commander of the York County Multijurisdictional Drug Enforcement Unit, said carfentanil is 100 times stronger than fetanyl, another potent opioid. Fetanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin, Brown said.

Anna’s family had no idea that she would occasionally self-medicate for pain with opioids.

Her family remembers her as a caring, gentle soul.

“She was a bright little light,” said Wanda Smail. “Sunshine in our lives.”

Wanda said her daughter was taking courses online to prepare for a pharmacy tech job. She would have turned 22 on July 5.

“She seemed to be just as happy as we’d ever seen her,” Wanda said.

When sheriff’s deputies knocked on the Smails’ door in Colorado, Wanda said she thought it must have been a car accident. Anna and Austin had been traveling to the beach for Memorial Day.

“A drug thing – that would have been the last thing I ever ever thought,” she said.

Anna was raised in a fairly traditional family, her mother said. Her parents knew that some of her friends occasionally smoked weed, and they didn’t approve. But they never thought Anna would use anything stronger.

Her father, Doug Smail, said he was shocked by her death. He and his wife had taught her about the dangers of drugs.

“You can think you can do everything right and till the soil of their life in every way possible…” he said. “And someone can still drop a poison seed in that soil.”

Forty-eight drug overdose deaths were reported in York County in 2016, compared to 28 in 2011, according to the York County Coroner’s Office Annual Report.

Forty of the overdose deaths in 2016 were directly related to opiates, compared to 20 in 2011, the report says.

Investigator Ryan King of the York County Drug Enforcement Unit said officers have seen an increase in carfentanil overdoses in the last three months.

Sometimes people don’t even know what they’re taking. He’s not sure if Anna knew, but from speaking with the others involved, he believes they knew the pills were “something different.”

Anna overdosed May 30, after she was given a carfentanil pill. Two Rock Hill residents have been arrested. One overdosed the same day, but was saved by the administration of the opioid-blocker Narcan, and a third is still on the run.

All three are charged with distribution of carfentanil.

King said people are making carfentanil in powder form and pressing it into pills. The drug unit members are not sure if the drugs are being manufactured in York County, or if they are being brought in.

“It’s dangerous,” King said. “You have people that are making it into pills – you don’t know exactly what you're getting.”

Carfenatil can also pose a danger to emergency responders, King said. In powder form, it can become airborne; even touching a pill laced with carfentanil is dangerous.

“It doesn’t take much to overdose,” he said.

Anna’s father, Doug, said he believes people who are manufacturing carfentanil should be imprisoned for life.

“They’re doing something that’s purposefully killing people and they know it,” he said.

Wanda said her family just wants to understand what happened – and how this happened.

She said Anna’s boyfriend told them Anna sometimes took oxycodone or other opioids as a relaxant, or if she was in pain.

But this time, Wanda said, the pill included carfentanil.

“That was the death sentence,” she said.

This story was originally published August 18, 2017 at 4:04 PM with the headline "Family says York woman received ‘death sentence’ in potent opioid pill."