A man pleaded guilty to selling the mixture of fentanyl and heroin that killed a Gaithersburg, Maryland, mother of three in August 2020.
The 34-year-old victim had been sober for about a year when anxiety got to her, her mother said.
Court documents showed a text conversation between the victim and Enitan Agbi as she drove to the parking lot of a Gaithersburg motel to buy drugs from him. Agbi told her to relax, and she replied, “I can’t.” She added, “I’m sick.”
Her mother said she prefers to remember her daughter – her only child – as more than her addiction, saying she was a joyful person who loved playing with her children.
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She was in court when the man accused of selling the heroin and fentanyl mixture that killed her daughter entered a guilty plea.
“I think it was healing for me to see this person was brought to justice,” she said.
She said the death also cost her a 10-year-old grandson, who she had raised in her home since he was a boy but has now gone to live with his father.
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“I was granted de facto parenthood, which means that I now have court-ordered visitation with my grandson,” she said.
She keeps a memory garden containing a stone with her daughter’s name outside her townhouse.
She’s grateful for contact with her youngest two grandchildren, who are being raised by their fathers’ families, but she is angry at how much the opioid epidemic has taken from her and so many others.
“I actually found a note when I was cleaning through things,” she said. “She had written a note that I never knew about that says, ‘If anything ever happens to me, if I die, I want my mother to raise my son.’”
Agbi faces a lengthy prison term at sentencing in September.
