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3 charged in man's fentanyl overdose
Three suspects were arrested and charged after they sold a pill poisoned with fentanyl to a 27-year-old who overdosed.
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - Tristan Buttrom would have celebrated his 28th birthday on Nov. 30 of this year.
Sadly, the young Apopka man’s life was cut short after he took a pill poisoned by fentanyl. Buttrom died of an overdose on Jan. 2.
Stacey Felter, Butrrom’s mother said,"My son was murdered, he did not choose this."
For the last ten months, she’s been grieving the loss of her son.
"He was a wonderful son, but he did struggle," she said.
Pain was her son’s struggle. He was stabbed at a house party back in 2017.
Doctors prescribed Percocet for pain management as he recovered from his injury.
There came a time when doctors stopped prescribing the addictive drug; Buttrom would resort to other avenues to access it.
On that early January day, he took a pill that Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma said came from three drug traffickers.
"They made an arrangement to have 40,000 pills shipped to Central Florida. One of those pills is responsible for the murder of Tristan," he said.
Bradley Hunter, Vincente Diaz and Andres Raya are all charged with first degree murder in connection to Buttrom’s death.
Raya is connected to the Mexican drug cartel Sheriff Lemma said.
He relates Buttrom’s story to the ongoing struggle with fentanyl overdose deaths in Seminole County.
He says, "People are taking a substance that has been unknowingly poisoned to the level of lethal doses."
Buttrom’s mother wants people to understand that her son’s death wasn’t simply an "overdose."
She said, "My son did not intentionally overdose, he did not take a bunch of pills, he didn’t want to kill himself, he was poisoned and killed by these three people."
Felter says that while she can not bring back her son, she carries his legacy with her every day.
She has a few tattoos marking her body in honor of her son.
One of them being his baseball number, "26".
The other is a note that Buttrom wrote to his mother when he was younger.
That handwritten note reads: "I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I live, my Mommy you’ll be. Love, Tristan."
In addition to her tattoos, she is devoting her life to curbing the epidemic in the name of her son.
"I don’t want one mom to ever go through what I have been through," she said.
The Sheriff’s Office has life-saving Narcan nasal spray available to the public.